proposal to make free the logo of Fedora

inode0 inode0 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 17 22:09:25 UTC 2010


On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 11:59 AM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Has this actually happened to another FOSS project?
>
> Did you fail to read the links that Mairin provided concerning the
> misappropriation of GNOME's foot logo by other corporate entities?

Misappropriation suggests to me it wasn't freely licensed, but was
rather freely available. That isn't the same thing and could happen to
us right now as well although we make getting the source slightly more
of a bother.

> Do you really want to see a situation like a computer manufacturer
> selling windows pre-loaded computers with a fedora community logo as
> their corporate brand and have zero power to tell that company to stop
> because the logo we are using isn't trademark protected?  I've
> personally no desire to see our community get into a situation like
> that after pouring blood sweat and tears into building brand awareness
> around a particular logo.

I wouldn't like to see that whether it is trademark protected and we
have the resources to stop it or not. No one has put any effort into
building brand awareness around a new freely licensed logo. I think
everyone understands that having two logos isn't a panacea and does
carry risk, but there is some benefit also and I'm happy to wait and
see how it works out for other distributions who try it over next few
years.

John


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