On 09/07/12 06:17, [email protected] wrote: > The most basic answer (someone form WMF can correct me if I am > somehow misled here) is that the logos are not released under a > free license because they are trademarks.
To be precise, the logos were not released under a free license because it was imagined that some day they would be trademarks. According to the trademark searches I did just now, the Wikipedia logo was only registered as a trademark in 2008, and the other projects as late as May 2012. The WMF felt that trademark licensing would be a useful way to raise money, as a complement to donations. For example, this website has a trademark license: http://wikipedia.wp.pl/ Obviously to support that sort of licensing arrangement, you need at least one sort of protection (copyright or trademark). Also, there was concern that a free license like the GFDL might be argued to be an implicit trademark license. Lawyers tend to be conservative on that type of issue. Currently, WMF does not even publish the 3D source files for the Wikipedia logo, or a high-resolution rendered image. I think that's a bigger problem than the lack of a free license, since it prevents people from improving the current poor-quality 3D rendering and contributing the results back to the project. -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
