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

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hey Vincent,

Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org> wrote:
> > http://www.gnome.org/logo-and-trademarks/
>
> So I guess I didn't notice the time where we started to enforce this. I
> do have issues with the guidelines,

That page is pretty new. The intention was to consolidate the
pre-existing guidelines, but there's a chance that some of the issues
you mention are simply bugs that need to be ironed out.

> as I believe they're not working
> well for a community driven project (and product!).
>
> I mean:
>
>  - "Always ensure that the logo is black or white, depending on the
>     background color (other colors are not permitted)"
>     => we fail at this, as we produced relatively recently stickers with
>        a yellow foot, and I'm pretty sure there are still many cases
>        where this is ignored

I think it depends on the context of use, but black and white are most
familiar and work in the majority of cases. It's pretty hard to have
guidelines for more creative uses of the logo, so this was just meant
to cover the common cases. Maybe we could have a statement that says
"please check with us if you want to use the logo in a way that
doesn't follow the guidelines"?

>  - "Always ensure that the logo is not embedded within other images or
>     graphics."
>     => we fail at this with the GNOME.Asia logo

Embedding the logo is something that can easily lead to trouble and it
can also suggest endorsement. The reason this is to help avoid
situations where someone has combined the GNOME logo with another in a
way that we feel is misleading, as well as to help people who are not
very skilled at graphic design achieve a good result.

There is a question here about whether we need to follow our own
guidelines to the letter though - it'd be good to check on that.

>  - the page seems to imply that we must always have the full logo (ie,
>    not just the foot, but also the word GNOME). Clearly, this is not
>    respected by way too many people, including ourselves.

Oh OK. That wasn't the intention. I'll see if I can fix that.

>  - we keep insisting about using the TM (which, btw, we don't use in the
>    control center in the system details panel) -- that is a big pain and
>    makes things ugly. My recollection of various debates about this from
>    when I was on the board is that it's not even required, but just
>    recommended.

I know I try and avoid the TM for things like merchandise or graphics.
It would be good to have some advice here.

> I for one am not happy with this situation. I remember that, years ago,
> Luis wanted to find an alternative way which wouldn't imply these strict
> guidelines. But to be honest, if there's no other way, then I think I'd
> like to question the need to trademark the logo.

Can you clarify a bit? You think that anyone should be able to use the
logo in any way?

Thanks,

Allan