[fab] Licensing the Fedora logo

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, Jesse Keating wrote:

> On Thursday 13 July 2006 14:24, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> > If we can't even allow *free redistribution* of the logo, then how can we
> > allow *free modification and redistribution*? Â The answer is, WE CAN'T. Â 
> > To repeat: NONE OF THE CURRENT OSS/CC LICENSES APPLY. Â PERIOD.
> 
> Does this mean that Fedora is not redistributable?  Wasn't that one of the 
> major goals of Fedora?

A fair question.

We do essentially grant a "license" of sorts for redistribution of the 
logo, and they can be found in our trademark guidelines, here:

http://fedora.redhat.com/About/legal/trademarks/guidelines/page4.html

This license means that Fedora, *as we ship it*, is fully redistributable.  
But if you change the content, you must lose the logo, because shipping 
altered content violates the terms of usage of the logo.

This is a reasonable compromise, IMHO, but this *particular* flavor of
compromise leaves no room to play with the logo.  At all.

There is another reasonable compromise:

  1. Come up with a "protected" logo that ships with FCn, and really 
anywhere we need to emphasize the strong relationship between RH and 
Fedora.
  2. Apply the aforementioned guidelines to the "protected" logo.
  3. "Free" the current logo. 
  4. Grant broader rights to the "free" logo via a CC license.

Apparently, not everyone thinks that this compromise is as reasonable as I
do.  So it goes.  But without such a compromise, we have to play serious
hardball in all matters logo-related, and it adds a lot of overhead to our
community building efforts.

--g

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