On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:50:57 +0200, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:45, <c.bu...@posteo.jp> wrote:
> > We plan to have our own logo and thinking about how to license this. It
> > might come to the case that the logo file (e.g. logo.svg, logo.png,
> > logo.ico) won't be licensed with an OSI accepted licence but with a more
> > closed license. This is because we don't want to get this logo used in
> > other contexts. The logo should be exclusive to the project. I am not
> > sure how to achieve this in another way.
>
> Reasonable. Then CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 is your match.
>
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?ref=chooser-v1
This is not a Free Software license and would not be allowed in Debian:
both the -NC (non-commercial use only) and the -ND (no derivative
works) disqualify it from being Free Software. Most non-Debian Linux
distributions have different rules for executable code (must be
Free Software under a suitable license) and non-code artifacts like
documentation and logos (must be redistributable but not necessarily
Free Software), but Debian does not distinguish.
If your goal is to prevent your project name or logo from being used in
ways that would be misleading to users/consumers (for example "passing
off" an extensively modified version of your software as being the
original, so that the developer of the modified version can benefit
from your good reputation), then trademarks are the legal tool that's
designed for that, not copyright. A strategy used in some projects (for
example Firefox, Python, and Debian itself) is to have a Free Software
*copyright* license for the logo, combined with a *trademark* license
that has restrictions. Debian allows this.
smcv
(not a lawyer)
