As probably most of you are aware, yesterday one of our community members unilaterally changed the xo-computer icon in sugar-artwork. The ensuing discussion about the change is in the github pull request, "Urgent fix logos", [1]
The gist of his concern is that OLPC has a trademark on the XO artwork [2] and there was concern that we were infringing and consequently downstream users would also be infringing. As Sean Daly points out, this is not the first time that the topic has come up [3, 4]. "In the past, OLPC was amenable to the use of the xo logo in Sugar, but asked we not use it in marketing materials without a formal co-branding licensing agreement." Personally, I think that OLPC was explicit in making the Sugar artwork available under a GPL licence and that this is hence moot. But I am not qualified to make that assessment. Consequently, I asked Adam Holt, our SFC liaison, to raise the issue with the legal team. Tony asked us to consider the following questions: 1) Why is the XO logo included in the sugar-artwork repo now -- and does the SLOBs want to keep it there? 2) Assuming the SLOBs want to keep the XO logo in sugar-artwork: what outcome would the SLOBs *prefer* to see happen? E.g., - Does Sugar want downstream users to be able to redistribute and modify Sugar's codebase with or without the XO trademark file included in the program? - Does the SLOBs want downstream users to be able to modify and redistribute the XO trademark image itself, or is that less important to Sugar? The answer to the first part of Tony's first question is that the XO logo was part of Sugar from the very beginning -- before Sugar Labs was split from OLPC. We've never changed it. Regarding the second part: does the SLOBs want to keep it there? is something we need to discuss. Personally, I think it serves its purpose well -- a childcentric interface and it is "iconic" of Sugar. I see no reason to change it. Regarding Tony's second question, I would want downstream users to have as much freedom as possible: to use or not use the XO icon as they choose. However, I don't see the need to expand beyond the context of Sugar. If someone downstream wants to use the artwork for some other purpose, that is not our issue (although I that the GPL license would be the relevant determinant.) What do others think? Note, I think we should defer the discussion of what we would use as replacement artwork until we resolve the current issue. regards. -walter [1] https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-artwork/pull/96 [2] http://www.trademarkia.com/xo-78880051.html [3] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-December/003059.html [4] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-October/014245.html -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org <http://www.sugarlabs.org>
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