Re: None FLOSS license for a logo?

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:54:30 -0700
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<1840458.I0fg2orEtM@soren-desktop>
Christian,

On Tuesday, August 27, 2024 2:41:32 AM MST [email protected] wrote:
> Dear Simon,
> 
> thank you for your reply and thoughts.
> 
> What confuses me is that there are two relationships: 1) Between the
> logo author and the project 2) and between the project and the rest of
> the world.
> I am not sure how to solve it.
> 
> A trademark is not an option for our project because of money and
> manpower.
> 
> Best
> Christian

All of what I am going to say has been said at least once in other parts of 
this discussion, but I think it is valuable to share it from my perspective as 
an upstream author of a project who has navigated a similar situation.

I develop Privacy Browser.  I created the main icon, which also acts as the 
project logo, by combining and modifying two icons released under the Apache 
2.0 license.  I decided to release the finished product under the GPLv3+, which 
is the same license as the rest of the project.

https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-pc/licenses/

To address your point 1 above, I own the copyright on the logo.  In your case, 
the logo author originally owns the copyright on the logo.  However, if you 
have paid the author to create it for you, it is not common for that copyright 
to be transferred to you.  Even if you didn’t pay for it, the copyright can be 
transferred.

Copyright transfer is a big subject that I won’t go into in more depth unless 
you have questions.  In the case of Privacy Browser, I insist that all 
contributors transfer the copyright of their contributions to the project to 
myself (something that the Free Software Foundation recommends as a best 
practice, although it has become uncommon in recent years).

https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/contributors/

To address your point 2 above, the copyright holder can issue a license to the 
world to use the logo.  But, as mentioned above, they can also exert trademark 
control over the logo.  Debian will not ship a logo that is not licensed under 
a DFSG-free license.  However, Debian will ship DFSG-free logos that also have 
trademark restrictions (almost all logos in Debian are trademarked).

Trademark provides all the protections you are looking for.  As previously 
mentioned, you can exert trademark protections without paying money to 
register the trademark.

Trademark law (which varies by country) basically says that nobody else can 
impersonate your business by using your name or your logo in such a way that a 
customer or user would think that they are you.  So, when you license software 
under the GPL, anyone can copy and redistribute it, but trademark law says 
they have to change the name and logo enough that the users can tell the 
difference between your project and theirs.

In my personal experience, I have had no problems with releasing the icon 
under the GPLv3+, even though I have not registered a trademark.  I have had a 
few people who have forked my project, some of whom have contacted me before 
doing so.  In all cases, I have informed them that I am happy to have them 
fork the project and that all they would need to do is change the name and the 
logo and comply with the GPLv3+.

In my experience, everyone who has forked my project was intending to change 
the name and logo anyway, because their whole purpose was to differentiate 
themselves from me.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]
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