[CentOS-devel] Opensourcing the CentOS brand creative work, licensing thoughts

Thu Sep 1 20:18:01 UTC 2022
Amy Marrich <amy at redhat.com>

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*

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On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 12:00 PM Shaun McCance <shaunm at 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:
> >
> > 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.
>
> 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.
>
> > 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.
>
> 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
>
>
>
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