[Design-team] summary of my meeting with Pam Chestek yesterday

[Nicu Buculei]

On 08/02/2010 02:57 PM, Klaatu wrote:
>> The second reason is more pragmatic.  As it is, we find unauthorized
>> uses fairly commonly.  People create their own design files for the
>> trademarks, but they can often be recognized because of the errors made
>> in creating the imitation.  Using a freely available font will make it
>> easier for copyists to create a more exact representation of our logo,
>> which we don't want.  The current font is a bit of sand in the engine
>> that helps us protect the uniqueness of our mark.
>
> This might be a purely academic point..  I understand not wanting to
> go re-doing all the branding of Fedora and swapping out the font used
> in the logo.  I think having a new official font that is
> similar-but-free is a great work-around.
>
> BUT... the idea that keeping a logo "proprietary" will help prevent
> its falsification..?  This sounds quite strange to me in that it is
> directly contrary to the theory behind Free Software.

My non-lawyer mind has comprehension difficulties here: we the the logo 
in GPL/CC-BY-SA source files still protected by trademark. Can't say if 
this is a conflict or not.

> Besides, I don't think it's true.  Whether I have to find a download
> of Bryant2 on fr33f0nts.ru or navigate the Fedora wiki for comfortaa,
> it feels like the same amount of effort to me, and they both result in
> what is probably going to be a poorly-done imitation of a well-known
> brand without any real indication of official backing.  The key is to
> make sure we are teaching Fedora users to be discerning about who and
> what they trust on the big scary internets.

If someone is looking to recreate the logo from text + bubble drawing 
then he's doing it wrong, is so much easy to extract it as vectors from 
some source files...

-- 
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/