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

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

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    Also, how do we define the right balance? In the Ubuntu GNOME example, I
    would consider the project to be both part of the Ubuntu and GNOME
    communities, so imho, it should be entitled to use our trademark.

As far as I can see*, you're right that we should let them use the
GNOME logo, but not for that reason.

A trademark or logo is a way to express a message (in this case, "This
is GNOME"), and the decision is when we want someone to be allowed to
say that.

I think we want that message to be expressed in this case, so we would
do well to say "Yes, you can use this logo".  As far as I can see*,
there is no reason to ask them to _change_ the logo; that would not
serve our purposes, only interfere.

* I say "As far as I can see" because the so far discussion has mostly
not addressed the question, "What decision about Ubuntu's version of
GNOME is best for GNOME?"  Thus, no real effort has been made yet to
find cogent arguments against letting them use the unmodified logo.
Once people address this question, maybe someone will point out a
valid argument against.  But I don't think so.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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