Use of IBM AIX logo

[Lukas Zapletal]

Hello,

in our open-source project Foreman we use various Linux distro icons,
example screenshot:

http://theforeman.org/static/images/screenshots/host_listing.png

Now, we have a patch from our community which adds support for IBM AIX
UNIX and it was coming with logo created from the official graphics:

http://www.recarta.co.uk/sites/default/files/images/ibm-aix-logo_0.jpg

(This is just a random copy returned by Google)

We have removed that from the patch and accepted it without the provided
logo for now, it was apparently resampled (smaller) version of the
official IBM logo.

Now, there is quite strict trademark policy by IBM which explicitly
disallows the use of their logos:

http://www.ibm.com/legal/us/en/copytrade.shtml

On the other hand, they allow "fair use" to some degree, which is not
explicitly specified in that document. Can be icon of that (small) size
considered as "fair use"?

It is legal to draw similar logo in GIMP (blue circle, green filling
with "AIX" in white) and then scale that down to size of an icon and use
that in our software?

If not, do we have any other options? I guess the second option could be
to create similar logo which would be different from the one presented
(different colors, font maybe). What kind of changes is considered as
different enough?

To be clear, Foreman is not yet in Fedora, but we are planning to
include it as all our dependencies get accepted. It's a long process, we
provide Fedora repositories with our software for now.

Thanks for help and happy New Year all!

-- 
Later,

 Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
 irc: lzap #theforeman

[Tom Callaway]

On 01/03/2014 11:54 AM, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
>  It is legal to draw similar logo in GIMP (blue circle, green filling
>  with "AIX" in white) and then scale that down to size of an icon and use
>  that in our software? 
I wouldn't advise that. I'd ask IBM for permission first, especially
given that they have explicit rules about the use of their marks.

~tom

==
¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> OSAS @ Red Hat
University Outreach || Fedora Special Projects || Fedora Legal

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 05:54:51PM +0100, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
>  Hello,
>  
>  in our open-source project Foreman we use various Linux distro icons,
>  example screenshot:
>  
>  http://theforeman.org/static/images/screenshots/host_listing.png 
FWIW you're on shaky ground even with Linux distro icons.  See for
example the license for using the Ubuntu (or even Fedora) trademarks.

I started a thread about this a while back, see:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604

Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to
download the icon from the virtual machine and display that.  It
doesn't store or ship any icons itself.  Virt-manager (and others) are
able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.

If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this
method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we
display the icons.

I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however.  Perhaps
it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/

[Lukas Zapletal]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 05:17:56PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604
>  
>  Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to
>  download the icon from the virtual machine and display that.  It
>  doesn't store or ship any icons itself.  Virt-manager (and others) are
>  able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.
>  
>  If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this
>  method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we
>  display the icons.
>  
>  I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however.  Perhaps
>  it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images? 
Quite an interesting idea, Rich. We do support both image based and
pxe-based provisioning, we'd need to do both.

What could be feasible would be to extend the puppet agent that runs on
the managed host to send the icon for us during the first fact upload.

I will look on this. Thanks.

LZ

-- 
Later,

 Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
 irc: lzap #theforeman

[Sam Kottler]

On 02/14/2014 10:08 AM, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
>  On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 05:17:56PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604
> >
> > Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to
> > download the icon from the virtual machine and display that.  It
> > doesn't store or ship any icons itself.  Virt-manager (and others) are
> > able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.
> >
> > If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this
> > method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we
> > display the icons.
> >
> > I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however.  Perhaps
> > it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images?
>  
>  Quite an interesting idea, Rich. We do support both image based and
>  pxe-based provisioning, we'd need to do both.
>  
>  What could be feasible would be to extend the puppet agent that runs on
>  the managed host to send the icon for us during the first fact upload. 
All facts are strings right now, so this won't work; perhaps we could
pass the path to the icon to Foremn as a fact and then use the same
method as virt-manager to connect to the compute resource and extract
it. Let's talk off-list to figure out a workable solution.

>  
>  I will look on this. Thanks.
>  
>  LZ
>

[Richard W.M. Jones]

[Copying the message I sent to lzap about how the libguestfs icon
inspection works]

The code is all here:

  https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/src/inspect-icon.c

You might as well use the API:

  http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#inspection
  http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#guestfs_inspect_get_icon

We don't have a specific example of using this API, but you could
adapt this example:

 
http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-python.3.html#example-2:-inspect-a-virtual-...

Put this code:

  pngdata = g.inspect_get_icon ()
  if pngdata != "":
    # some code here that displays the PNG data using your
    # choice of graphics library

just before the unmount call at the end.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines.  Supports shell scripting,
bindings from many languages.  http://libguestfs.org