Dear community,
I would like to bring up this topic once again because it is relevant for the well-being of CentOS visual identity, and its future improvements on the long-term. This mail is probably for Red Hat Liaison, considering the legalities involved in relation to CentOS branding matters. Nevertheless, I would like to keep the discussion open to collect the vast majority of opinions possible about it.
Considering the CentOS brand is presently a registered trademark of Red Hat, the exact questions are:
1. Related to CentOS brand changes, and design improvements: What does Red Hat allow the CentOS community to do, and not to do? Here, please, consider the legal and not-legal matters.
2. Would it be possible for Red Hat to explicitly set the license under which the CentOS brand (creative/design) work is released, so to grantee its openness inside the CentOS community? If not, please, elaborate why, and share the expected process to follow in order to keep the brand design relevant through time.
I deliberately have collected some thoughts[1] about the recent CentOS brand actualization process but am not sure if they are aligned with Red Hat needs and expectations. The goal here would be to make a very clean and simple statement about how much autonomy does the CentOS community have over its own brand. Also, complement the CentOS Trademark Guidelines[2] document with such information, since there isn't mention of it at the moment.
[1] https://gitlab.com/areguera/centos-brand [2] https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/
Appreciate your comments.
Best regards.
On Sat, 2022-08-27 at 13:54 -0300, Alain Reguera Delgado wrote:
Dear community,
I would like to bring up this topic once again because it is relevant for the well-being of CentOS visual identity, and its future improvements on the long-term. This mail is probably for Red Hat Liaison, considering the legalities involved in relation to CentOS branding matters. Nevertheless, I would like to keep the discussion open to collect the vast majority of opinions possible about it.
Considering the CentOS brand is presently a registered trademark of Red Hat, the exact questions are:
- Related to CentOS brand changes, and design improvements: What
does Red Hat allow the CentOS community to do, and not to do? Here, please, consider the legal and not-legal matters.
I'm not the liaison and so I'm not really speaking on behalf of Red Hat here. From my experience in OSPO, we'd rather not involve Red Hat in deciding everything. There are some places where we'd want to consult with Brand or Legal (trademarkability, liability), but for the most part, Red Hat doesn't need to be involved. Just don't do anything awful.
- Would it be possible for Red Hat to explicitly set the license
under which the CentOS brand (creative/design) work is released, so to grantee its openness inside the CentOS community? If not, please, elaborate why, and share the expected process to follow in order to keep the brand design relevant through time.
So, I'm going to approach this from my experience on the GNOME board. The GNOME logo is licensed under a CC-BY-SA license, which allows people to modify and reuse it. But it's also trademarked, which means you can't use it in a way that would imply GNOME is doing something it isn't. This is deliberate, and was informed by Karen Sandler (actual lawyer, previously executive direction of GNOME Foundation, now at Software Freedom Conservancy). So, for example, there was one of those "fish exfoliate your feet" places that used a modification of the GNOME logo. This is allowed under the copyright license, and it's not a violation of trademark because it's a different industry. But if you used the GNOME logo to make, for example, a Linux distribution, then there would be a clear trademark problem.
Again, not speaking for Red Hat here, but this is what I'd advise CentOS (and most other open source projects) to do. Use an open license like a CC license, but use trademark law to protect our identity and reputation.
Also, I am definitely not a lawyer, but Alain I think you legally hold the copyright on the new logo, unless you did a copyright assignment.
I deliberately have collected some thoughts[1] about the recent CentOS brand actualization process but am not sure if they are aligned with Red Hat needs and expectations. The goal here would be to make a very clean and simple statement about how much autonomy does the CentOS community have over its own brand. Also, complement the CentOS Trademark Guidelines[2] document with such information, since there isn't mention of it at the moment.
[1] https://gitlab.com/areguera/centos-brand [2] https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/
I've been wanting to revamp our trademark use guidelines to be more permissive in certain cases (for example, hosting providers showing that they support CentOS). It would be nice to come up with wording for these kinds of cases, and to have some ready-made badge with the logo they can use.
Thanks, Shaun
It sounds like that license would at least be a good place to start and we should also work out the copyright issue sooner vs later just so it's clear and enforceable if needed. I also like this last idea of Shaun's of ready made badges with the logo for certain use cases.
Amy
*Amy Marrich*
She/Her/Hers
Principal Technical Marketing Manager - Cloud Platforms
Red Hat, Inc https://www.redhat.com/
amy@redhat.com
Mobile: 954-818-0514
Slack: amarrich
IRC: spotz https://www.redhat.com/
On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 12:00 PM Shaun McCance shaunm@redhat.com wrote:
On Sat, 2022-08-27 at 13:54 -0300, Alain Reguera Delgado wrote:
Dear community,
I would like to bring up this topic once again because it is relevant for the well-being of CentOS visual identity, and its future improvements on the long-term. This mail is probably for Red Hat Liaison, considering the legalities involved in relation to CentOS branding matters. Nevertheless, I would like to keep the discussion open to collect the vast majority of opinions possible about it.
Considering the CentOS brand is presently a registered trademark of Red Hat, the exact questions are:
- Related to CentOS brand changes, and design improvements: What
does Red Hat allow the CentOS community to do, and not to do? Here, please, consider the legal and not-legal matters.
I'm not the liaison and so I'm not really speaking on behalf of Red Hat here. From my experience in OSPO, we'd rather not involve Red Hat in deciding everything. There are some places where we'd want to consult with Brand or Legal (trademarkability, liability), but for the most part, Red Hat doesn't need to be involved. Just don't do anything awful.
- Would it be possible for Red Hat to explicitly set the license
under which the CentOS brand (creative/design) work is released, so to grantee its openness inside the CentOS community? If not, please, elaborate why, and share the expected process to follow in order to keep the brand design relevant through time.
So, I'm going to approach this from my experience on the GNOME board. The GNOME logo is licensed under a CC-BY-SA license, which allows people to modify and reuse it. But it's also trademarked, which means you can't use it in a way that would imply GNOME is doing something it isn't. This is deliberate, and was informed by Karen Sandler (actual lawyer, previously executive direction of GNOME Foundation, now at Software Freedom Conservancy). So, for example, there was one of those "fish exfoliate your feet" places that used a modification of the GNOME logo. This is allowed under the copyright license, and it's not a violation of trademark because it's a different industry. But if you used the GNOME logo to make, for example, a Linux distribution, then there would be a clear trademark problem.
Again, not speaking for Red Hat here, but this is what I'd advise CentOS (and most other open source projects) to do. Use an open license like a CC license, but use trademark law to protect our identity and reputation.
Also, I am definitely not a lawyer, but Alain I think you legally hold the copyright on the new logo, unless you did a copyright assignment.
I deliberately have collected some thoughts[1] about the recent CentOS brand actualization process but am not sure if they are aligned with Red Hat needs and expectations. The goal here would be to make a very clean and simple statement about how much autonomy does the CentOS community have over its own brand. Also, complement the CentOS Trademark Guidelines[2] document with such information, since there isn't mention of it at the moment.
[1] https://gitlab.com/areguera/centos-brand [2] https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/
I've been wanting to revamp our trademark use guidelines to be more permissive in certain cases (for example, hosting providers showing that they support CentOS). It would be nice to come up with wording for these kinds of cases, and to have some ready-made badge with the logo they can use.
Thanks, Shaun
CentOS-devel mailing list CentOS-devel@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
On Thu, 2022-09-01 at 15:18 -0500, Amy Marrich wrote:
It sounds like that license would at least be a good place to start and we should also work out the copyright issue sooner vs later just so it's clear and enforceable if needed.
Adding a copyright note in the repository where sources are stored in would be enough? If there is something else that I can help with to get this done, please let me know.
I also like this last idea of Shaun's of ready made badges with the logo for certain use cases.
Noted.
Thanks.
On Thu, 2022-09-01 at 13:00 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
So, I'm going to approach this from my experience on the GNOME board. The GNOME logo is licensed under a CC-BY-SA license, which allows people to modify and reuse it. But it's also trademarked, which means you can't use it in a way that would imply GNOME is doing something it isn't. This is deliberate, and was informed by Karen Sandler (actual lawyer, previously executive direction of GNOME Foundation, now at Software Freedom Conservancy). So, for example, there was one of those "fish exfoliate your feet" places that used a modification of the GNOME logo. This is allowed under the copyright license, and it's not a violation of trademark because it's a different industry. But if you used the GNOME logo to make, for example, a Linux distribution, then there would be a clear trademark problem.
Again, not speaking for Red Hat here, but this is what I'd advise CentOS (and most other open source projects) to do. Use an open license like a CC license, but use trademark law to protect our identity and reputation.
Releasing the work under the terms of CC-BY-SA license and using trademark law to protect it is totally fine to me. I agree with it. I will add a new section in the repository where the design sources are stored to explicitly set this.
Also, I am definitely not a lawyer, but Alain I think you legally hold the copyright on the new logo, unless you did a copyright assignment.
I haven't done any copyright assignment. I am ok holding the copyright on the new logo if that would be the case.
I've been wanting to revamp our trademark use guidelines to be more permissive in certain cases (for example, hosting providers showing that they support CentOS). It would be nice to come up with wording for these kinds of cases, and to have some ready-made badge with the logo they can use.
We have an image for a similar purpose in the httpd testing page, but probably it needs more work to fit the need. Here is the link:
https://gitlab.com/areguera/centos-brand/-/blob/v2/Sources/centos-poweredby-...
Thanks Shaun, for sharing your experience in GNOME. It has been very useful.
-
Alain Reguera Delgado -
Amy Marrich -
Shaun McCance