proposal to make free the logo of Fedora

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi René,

On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 01:06 +0200, René Mérou wrote:
> So, please undestandme,  im not looking for "the answer" (that i thank you of 
> course).  I try to make you to start one open debate in the proyect not just  
> one part of it.

This is something that has already been discussed and debated quite a
lot. Just as recently as less than 2 months ago we approached the legal
team to see if changing the font of Fedora's logotype from proprietary
Bryant2 to OFL Comfortaa would be accepted. But it wasn't, not just
because of trademark protection issues but because of branding
consistency, etc. I trust Red Hat as an organization to do the right
thing - and the trademark belongs to them. If Red Hat legal feels
there's sufficient risk in opening up the licensing of the logo, I
believe that and support that decision.

I completely understand and respect the point you are trying to bring
up, and I have fought that battle before. In the end, however, we are
bound by the trademark rules and I honestly would rather spend my time
designing awesome stuff for Fedora than fighting trademark defense
battles. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.

We have a very open & easy process for folks using our logo in a valid
manner to obtain the source files for it, and we use openly-licensed
fonts in all of our design, we openly license all of the designs we
produce, and work to promote the openly-licensed works of other artists
(check out our supplemental wallpapers project [1] highlighting talented
creative commons artists). We also only use free & open source tools to
produce and work with our assets, and many of us promote the free & open
source creative tools by teaching classes and by providing the Design
Suite spin. 

I do think that's good enough.

~m

[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F14_Artwork_Supplemental_Wallpapers_Winners