Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of October 29th, 2013

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hi,

Le jeudi 21 novembre 2013, à 12:17 +0000, Allan Day a écrit :
> Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org> wrote:
> > > Do we have examples of the guidelines "hurting us"?
> >
> > I can think of groups simply choosing to not use the GNOME logo anymore
> > because they're afraid of not respecting the guidelines.
>
> I'd be interested in the specifics here. Could you send me contact
> details for the groups concerned?

I'd start with all the local groups that we have (see
https://wiki.gnome.org/UserGroups -- it's likely outdated, though) and
our downstreams (contact would be distributor-list).

> > If I was
> > completely new to the community, and I'd read the guidelines, I'd simply
> > think that it's simpler to not use the logo at all. I'd not even ask...
> >
> > This hurts because I can imagine local groups not doing stickers,
> > flyers, etc. because they'd be afraid of the guidelines. Back in the
> > days when we started GNOME-FR, there were no guidelines so we went crazy
> > and did many different things; we wouldn't have done all that with the
> > current guidelines.
>
> Yeah, so the thing that I think we really miss is some examples of
> what is cool to do. Like examples of t-shirts and stickers, and
> original designs based on the logo. My understanding is that this
> would require some work from the board...

What about all the goodies we had at FOSDEM and GUADEC in the last 7 or
8 years? :-)

> Right now the guidelines are pretty unfriendly (especially the
> guidelines for third parties, which is one of the things I don't like
> about them) and only really cover what you can't do, rather than what
> you can. The new page I wrote makes an effort to do away with as much
> unfriendliness as possible, but could be more welcoming and
> accessible.

Just to give an example of what we do in openSUSE:
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines

To be clear, this page is clearly not the most friendly page out there
(too complex), but it explicitly gives many examples of what can be done
without requesting permission.

> > > In the Ubuntu GNOME case, I think it's fair to ask about the logo,
> > > irrespective of the trademark guidelines. Their logo [1] is
> > > essentially the same as the GNOME logo itself; some differentiation
> > > seems beneficial for both them and us. We don't have to be unfriendly
> > > about it, but then a dialogue about how they can help to support the
> > > GNOME brand doesn't seem like a bad thing.
> >
> > Of course it's fair, but to be honest, I'm fine with them using our
> > logo. Fedora and openSUSE both use our logo too:
> >   http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options#desktops
> >   http://software.opensuse.org/131/en
> >
> > Sure, the context is slightly different, because you see all the flavors
> > on the same page for Fedora and openSUSE, while it's not the case for
> > Ubuntu GNOME. But it feels the same.
>
> The seem like different types of cases to me, to be honest.  Using the
> GNOME foot as a logo for an independent project seems of a different
> type to indicating that GNOME is featured in a piece of software. (The
> latter is stated as fair use by the third party guidelines, fwiw.)

Here's the thing: I don't see Ubuntu GNOME as an independent project,
but as the result of the work of the GNOME team in Ubuntu, in very much
the same way the GNOME team in openSUSE is able to produce a pretty good
openSUSE+GNOME-based live image. And quoting their wiki page: "Ubuntu
GNOME is an official flavour of Ubuntu, featuring the GNOME desktop
environment." [1] That seams to match pretty well what you wrote above
about Fedora and openSUSE.

And really, coming back to one of my initial feeling: I actually want
them to use our logo so they can help promote GNOME!

Cheers,

Vincent

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME

-- 
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