Hi all,
Am 2023-12-11 11:58, schrieb Richard Brown:
On 2023-12-11 11:32, Patrick Fitzgerald wrote:
To my mind, this is all about the difference between "asking for
permission vs asking for forgiveness".
Linux has thrived, in part, because people have acted first and asked
for forgiveness later.
Personally I think the current logos are fine, but if the community
feels that they want to change them, let them come up with
alternatives that be submitted to Suse as suggestions. Suse have every
right to refuse the submissions, but who knows, someone out there
might come out with the perfect logo.
On the other hand, I think that money is better spent on events and
infrastructure than trademark lawyers... but having enough for both
would be even better ;)
I think something as important to the project as its legal identity is too risky to be playing fast and loose with.
Permission absolutely should be found rather than seeking forgiveness over a topic of this magnitude.
And we have 8000+ votes now for something SUSE will totally have the right to ignore..that would be a waste of a lot of peoples efforts, which I think is more valuable than any amount of money...but that's the path we've found ourselves on with things being pushed first and only considered later.
Reality check
the vast majority of those logos are utilising the 'Button' brand, which was intentionally NOT trademarked to allow a much more liberal use, reuse, and modification of it, without needing to request anything from the Board (The trademark guidelines applies to the Trademarks..obviously..)
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Artwork_brand#Buttons"The round button can be freely colored and combined with other graphical elements to form spinners or project logos. It is also allowed to give it custom color treatment."
But the core point at hand here is that a vote has been triggered under the premise of changing the Project's main logo
The project's main logo is not based on the "Buttons" logo, but is a formally, legally, registered trademark, owned by SUSE.
And so, I think SUSE's formal, public, consent should be clearly given to the Project before we go replacing their logo, with clear parameters of what sort of new logo would be acceptable and what not.
It's their brand, not ours, we just get to use it.