New subject: Fwd: Re: [Fedora-legal-list] License for wallpapers in old Fedora releases

3 Aug 2009


      Here is the reply I received after asking for a license change for the 
wallpapers in old Fedora versions:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Fedora-legal-list] License for wallpapers in old Fedora 
releases
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:03:19 -0400
From: Tom "spot" Callaway
On 07/24/2009 11:28 AM, Nicu Buculei wrote:
...
At the Design-Team we figured it would be handy to provide (perhaps in a
gallery) wallpapers from the old releases, so the users who liked them
can have a handy access at the images. It is also useful to have when
documenting our history.
However, we have a licensing issue with the images created before the
team establishment, from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora 7, when they were
created behing the closed doors, at the Red Hat Desktop Team.
My understanding is, being created Red Hat employees as part of their
normal job and included into Fedora, those should have some Free license.
So, I should have caught this initially, but Red Hat Legal noticed that
all of these images contain the Fedora logo. Accordingly, we can't
permit these images to be released under a license which permits
modification.
So, this means there are two options remaining:
1. We can package up these backgrounds with a license identical to that
of the fedora-logos package (basically, right to use, copy, and
redistribute, but not modify, with some extra conditions around the
Fedora marks).
2. We could take the images and remove the Fedora trademarks from them
and release them under a Creative Commons license.
Or, we could do both.
Let me know what you think,
~spot
------ End Original Message ------
My take:
1. we though mainly about making those available on the web, i think it 
would be confusing to add various clauses to the license, which very few 
people will read, understand or care about. it would be preferable to go 
with a simpler route.
2. we can remove the trademarks only if we have access to the sources, 
which i am not sure is the case for all the images. with some, like FC6 
NDA it may be impossible to remove everything and still retain a good 
looking image (or it may be, since what we have there is not complying 
with the guidelines anyway, so what is in there can't be our trademark).
-- 
nicu