[fab] Licensing the Fedora logo

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

To circle back on this:

The fundamental problem with any artwork that contains the Fedora logo is 
this:

THE FEDORA LOGO IS NOT PART OF ANY COMMONS.  IT IS A TRADEMARK THAT RED 
HAT INTENDS TO PROTECT.

Legally, I just don't see any middle ground *at all* here.  There is no
current OSS/CC license we could grant that would allow us editorial
control over the *use* of the mark -- which is the key demand of our legal
department.

The Fedora Logo is not redistributable without permission, period.  Which
means that the CC NoDerivs license would be unacceptable, and the OPL
would be unacceptable.

If we can't even allow *free redistribution* of the logo, then how can we
allow *free modification and redistribution*?  The answer is, WE CAN'T.  
To repeat: NONE OF THE CURRENT OSS/CC LICENSES APPLY.  PERIOD.

Am I wrong here?  Mark?  Anyone?  

===

If I'm right, it means that we must come up with an approval process for
both redistribution and modification of *any* artwork that contains the
Fedora logo -- a process that has the lowest possible overhead, and which
makes it *crystal clear* that the logo is NOT OPEN.

(This, by the way, is precisely why I've been advocating so strongly for 
two logos.  Re: the "official Debian logo," maybe the reason no one ever 
sees it is that Debian has a very difficult time doing anything in an 
"official" capacity.)

--g

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Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org
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On Tue, 11 Jul 2006, [UTF-8] Máirín Duffy wrote:

> Warning - IANAL, and can't offer legal advice, etc. etc., these are just 
> my thoughts:
> 
> > On Sun, 9 Jul 2006, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> >> I believe that the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License of 
> >> Diana's work is not compatible because of the Non commercial and No 
> >> derivatives clauses.
> 
> Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> > Heh.  Licensing, content, and RPMs.  A fascinating topic.  :)
> > 
> > We don't yet have a clear policy for licensing of artwork.  The Fedora 
> > logo, for instance, *cannot* itself be licensed because it's a trademark 
> > that we want to protect.
> > 
> > But what does that mean for projects that seek to reuse that artwork?  
> > Makes it very difficult.
> 
> FWIW I really think Creative Commons' Attribution ShareAlike license [1] 
> is the most compatible artwork license for the ideals of Fedora.
> 
> I really don't like the idea of having NoDerivs applied to Fedora 
> artwork as that seems to render it 'closed source' in a way. If other 
> artists would like to take NoDeriv-licensed wallpapers, 'remix' them, 
> and make them available, they cannot under the provisions of that 
> license. The rationale for the NoDerivs clause on any artwork that uses 
> the Fedora logo makes no sense to me. We're not licensing our code 
> 'NoDerivs,' why would we want to license our artwork NoDerivs? It 
> doesn't protect the logo - it protects everything in the image but the 
> Fedora logo, case in point:
> 
> (1) If I wanted to take a nice wallpaper but modify it so it was say a 
> Debian wallpaper rather than a Fedora one, it seems I could not because 
> of the NoDerivs clause. If I took the wallpaper with the Fedora logo on 
> a golf ball, for example, gimped out the Fedora logo and put in a Debian 
> logo, that would be creating a derivative of that wallpaper thus 
> violating the license.
> 
> (2) If I wanted to make a new wallpaper with the Fedora logo, I most 
> certainly could and people have - Diana has a whole website full of 
> them. So the NoDerivs clause does not seem to protect the logo at least 
> in practice.
> 
> AFAIK, we are also looking to use Attribution ShareAlike for the new 
> icons the Fedora Art team is working on [2] (please correct me if I'm 
> wrong, Diana) The advantage of the CC licenses over the GPL (the GPL was 
> used for the Bluecurve icon artwork) is that the CC licenses are written 
> specifically to address media content, and the Attribution ShareAlike 
> license is really the closest of the CC licenses in spirit to the GPL.
> 
> I understand that the logo licensing issue is complicated and hairy, but 
> I think having artwork with a NoDerivs license just makes the situation 
> worse. It seems to me that the presence of the logo in a piece of 
> artwork suggests a more open license; otherwise the artist in question 
> is taking the logo as it was their own IP and their right to license its 
> usage which it is not. Wouldn't allowing people to do such jeopardize 
> the trademark?
> 
> This all seems to be a sore topic though. How do we discuss this and 
> move forward with a solid policy? I think this is a very important step 
> for the Fedora Art team to grow.
> 
> ~m