Hello,

I am an upstream maintainer of a GPL-v2-or-later project.

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.

To my understanding GNU/Linux Debian is quit strict when it comes to
free software principles.
Are there any rules or restrictions I need to consider when it comes to
a situation like this?
Is it even allowed to package such a non-OSI-licensed logo in a
GNU/Linux Debian package?

If you have another idea how we could achieve our goals please let me
know.

Best,
Christian Buhtz
https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/215

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On Tue, 27 Aug 2024, c buhtz wrote:

I am an upstream maintainer of a GPL-v2-or-later project.

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.

To my understanding GNU/Linux Debian is quit strict when it comes to
free software principles.
Are there any rules or restrictions I need to consider when it comes
to a situation like this?
Is it even allowed to package such a non-OSI-licensed logo in a
GNU/Linux Debian package?

If you have another idea how we could achieve our goals please let me
know.

Trying to achieve this with copyright alone will be awkward, because
copyright is the wrong tool for this. Instead, you may want to consider registering a trademark for your logo. This would give you control
over its use, while at the same time it could be under a free
(copyright) license.

For example, the Gentoo logo has CC-BY-SA as its copyright license
while at the same time it is protected as a trademark with some usage guidelines [1].

The downside is that registering a trademark requires some paperwork
and costs money. You'd also need a legal entity as the trademark
holder.

There was a nice introductory talk / case study about the subject at
this year's FOSDEM [2].

Ulrich

[1] https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/foundation/name-logo-guidelines.html [2] https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2595-figuring-out-trademark-policy-on-the-fly/

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Hello Roberto,

I think what confuses me is that there are two relationships. One is
between the logo author and the project. And the other is between the
project and their users or the rest of the world.

Am 27.08.2024 10:50 schrieb Roberto A. Foglietta:

Reasonable. Then CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 is your match.

thank you for that tip. I will have a deeper look into it.

I concerned about two aspects here.
"non-commercial". What about GNU/Linux distros like Canonical Ubuntu.
They do sell their distro. But in this case the might not to be allowed
to use the logo of backintime when they do package it.

"NoDerivates": As project maintainers we would like to have the ability
to modify the logo from time to time. For example using another color
palette or integrate the logo into another picture.

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On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:50:57 +0200, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:

On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:45, <[email protected]> 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)

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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

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Am 27.08.2024 12:07 schrieb Roberto A. Foglietta:

As long as it is a separate file. Instead, it is converted into a
bitmap data structure and embedded into the code, that is a derivative
work and can make a difference. IMHO.

Just a corner case, but written for sake of completeness.

That brings me to a thought.

The "original source" of the logo is an SVG file.
From that SVG we "generate" some png or ico files used as icons to
display in a file manager or the application GUI.

Might it be a way that the author of the original source (SVG) logo give
the project or persons (as members of the project) the exclusive right
to use and modify that SVG file, create derived works (png/ico files)
from it and publish them under our own license?
The SVG file does not need to be part of the public (and licensed)
repository.
We could put only the png/ico files into the repo and add a licence to
that files. The question keeps: What licence to choose then (that is
compatible to GNU/Linux Debian)?

It seems to me, without a trademark, we can not control for someone
reusing the logo in a different context. We have to accept that this can happen.

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On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 11:58:02 +0200, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:

A logo is not a software. A logo displayed into a software does not
change the nature of the work, as free software.

This point of view matches the policy of most non-Debian distributions
(for example Arch and Fedora), and I personally agree that the requirements
we put on executable code do not all make sense for non-executable data -
but my personal opinions do not set Debian's policy (except to the extent
that I get one vote in each general resolution).

Debian's policy is that the term "software" is applied equally to
executable code and to non-executable data, and the archive administrators
(ftp team) will reject packages that contain copyrightable works under a non-DFSG license, whether they are executable code or not.

This is a self-imposed restriction, not a consequence of copyright law.
Debian has chosen to have the policy that everything in main is Free
Software - whether executable or not - and that means that anything that
is not Free Software cannot be in main. It can be in non-free if it's
legally distributable, but non-free is officially not part of Debian.

Copyright law only tells us what we can and can't legally distribute:
in Debian terms, that's the dividing line between "could be included in non-free" and "can't be included in non-free". There are plenty of things
that are allowed by copyright law, but we choose not to do because our self-imposed policy says we will not.

It doesn't matter whether you agree with this policy or not, and it doesn't matter whether *I* agree with this policy either: the only opinions that
matter for inclusion in Debian or exclusion from Debian are the collective opinion of the project as a whole (as expressed in General Resolutions and
the project's constitution), and the interpretation of those policies by
the archive administrators (ftp team).

No amount of trying to convince me will change this, because I do not have
the authority to change it.

smcv

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On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:25:34 +0000, [email protected] wrote:

This sounds to me that it is not clear if "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0" is allowed in Debian GNU/Linux or not. Am I right?

No, the policy is quite clear. CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0 is not a Free Software
license according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines [1], therefore
it is not allowed in Debian.

It would be allowed in non-free, which is not part of Debian, but I'm
guessing that you would prefer your software to be in Debian main, rather
than being moved to non-free just because its logo is non-Free (or,
perhaps more likely, remaining in main with its logo deleted).

The lack of clarity here is that a participant in this list who is not a
member of the Debian project and does not speak on behalf of the Debian
project is giving you misleading information.

Isn't there a list of accepted licences?

There is no single list of accepted licenses, but the unofficial wiki page https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#Licenses_that_are_DFSG-incompatible specifically mentions the CC-BY-NC-SA family of licenses as not DFSG-compatible. -ND is more restrictive (less Free) than -SA, therefore
it is also not DFSG-compatible.

Or is there an official Debian institution I can ask about it?

Officially, the only authority on what is and isn't allowed in Debian is the archive administrators team (ftp team), <https://ftp-master.debian.org/>.

Unofficially, please don't waste their limited time. CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0 is unambiguously not a Free Software license and would not be accepted.

smcv

[1] https://www.debian.org/social_contract
DFSG point 3: DFSG requires derived works to be allowed, -ND forbids them
DFSG point 6: DFSG requires commercial use to be allowed, -NC forbids it

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Hello Simon,

thank you for clarify things.

Am 27.08.2024 13:08 schrieb Simon McVittie:

Officially, the only authority on what is and isn't allowed in Debian
is the
archive administrators team (ftp team),
<https://ftp-master.debian.org/>.

Unofficially, please don't waste their limited time.

I won't. ;)

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0 is
unambiguously not a Free Software license and would not be accepted.

What kind of licence would you suggest for a graphic file?

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Dear Roberto,
it seems to me you try to distract the discussion somewhere else instead
of focusing on my situation.

I appreciate your efforts to help but I don't see how your comments can
help me. It seems to me you even don't understand my situation. I might
wasn't clear enough with describing it. My apologize.

Am 27.08.2024 13:37 schrieb Roberto A. Foglietta:

Are they reading the SVG with their eyes and painting every pixel one
by one, with their own hands?

They will open - probably GIMP or by shell running convert - and let
standard libraries do the format conversion.

But I am not the maintainer of GIMP and don't have to decide about its
license.

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Hello Daniel,

thank you for your reply.

Am 27.08.2024 14:18 schrieb Daniel Hakimi:

2. Are you worried about consumer confusion from somebody using your
logo
or a logo that kind of seems like yours (trademark), or are you worried
about protecting the image, the artwork, and the style of artwork that
go
into it (copyright)?

I am not sure about the answers. But I think it is most about the first
case you described, if somebody using the logo for another
project/software not related to ours.

3. The cc-by-nd strikes me as the right copyright license here.

How does this fit into the Debian rules? Simon McVittie pointed out that
"nd" is not compatible with Debian.

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Hello Mihai,
Thank you for your reply.

Am 27.08.2024 14:36 schrieb Mihai Moldovan:

My parting words are: do not make the situation more complicated than
it really is. It is highly unlikely that your logo will be abused,
keep the complete work free and as an added bonus you will not have to
worry about inclusion in any free software distribution.

I think this is the best advice I do have in this case. ;)

Thank you very much.

Best,
Christian

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Copy: [email protected]

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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Copy: [email protected]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:39:51 AM MST Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:

https://github.com/robang74/cloudflare-warp-gui-linux?tab=readme-ov file#license-terms

At the end of the README.md, there are two sections about licensing
and debianizing. In which, I am explaining that the project contains
some images for which the distribution and/or use might be restricted
because they are related to CloudFlare company but because those
images and icons are strictly used ONLY in conjunction with their
service, I am considering their usage a "fair use" case.

After reading over the information in the link, it isn’t clear to me what licenses the CloudFlare icons are released under, if any.

“Some images are strictly related with CloudFlare trademark and related services and cannot be relicensed.”

Cloud you please clarify the licensing status of the icons (which is separate from any trademark issues)?

--
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]
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On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:36:08 +0200 Mihai Moldovan wrote:

[...]

Honestly, your best bet is to just use the GPL v2+ license for the
logo as you already do for the source code.

This is also my own recommendation: release the logo under the same
license terms as the rest of the software project (GPL-2+ in this case).

It seems to me, without a trademark, we can not control for someone
reusing the logo in a different context. We have to accept that this can happen.

Yes, copyright is not the right tool for what you want to do. Trademarks,
on the other hand, would be, but it does not seem like you are able
to handle that,

[...]

I think trademark laws are the right tool to prevent others from using
the logo in a way that may generate confusion (between the original
software project and a derived, or a distinct and completely unrelated
software project).

As far as I know, some protection is granted to unregistered trademarks
in some jurisdictions. Hence, even without registering anything, some protection could be obtained against "passing off" something else as
the original software project...


--
http://www.inventati.org/frx/
There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory! ..................................................... Francesco Poli .
GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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Copy: [email protected]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2024 1:54:54 PM MST Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:

Cloud you please clarify the licensing status of the icons (which is separate
from any trademark issues)?

Thanks for the question. The answer is simply: it does not matter.

It does not matter for the project and its users as long as those
images are used under "fair use" conditions.

It does not matter for Debian because it is always better keeping the
"main" repository above of any doubts.

It matters for Debian in the sense that it alters how to package the program. What is important to understand in this context is that for packages in main, the tarball used to populate the source package cannot contain any files that are not licensed under DFSG-free licenses *even if those files do not end up in
the binary packages*. This is actually a scenario that we run into a lot when packaging software. In that case, you will use the Files-Excluded functionality of uscan to repackage the upstream tarball to remove all the the files that are not DFSG-free. When you do this, the Debian package name will contain ‘+dfsg’. As an example, see:

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/electrum

So, this isn’t a blocker for Debian packaging, but it is necessary that you document (in debian/copyright) that every file that ends up in the tarballs that are archived on Debian servers in “main” as part of the source package
have a DFSG-free license.

--
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]
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On Wednesday, August 28, 2024 3:44:22 PM MST Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:

Nope. It is enough that the script that packages the software for
Debian removes some files. That script can be shared in the project
itself, or written by the Deabian package maintainer. Like this script
that creates different files archives, oriented for different
distributions:

I’m not sure if I fully understand what you are saying above, but I would simply point you
toward the Debian Policy Manual.

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html

“The clean target cannot be used to remove files in the source tree that are not compatible
with the DFSG. This is because the files would remain in the upstream tarball, and thus in
the source package, so the source package would continue to violate DFSG. Instead, the
upstream source should be repacked to remove those files.”

--
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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<body><p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;margin-right:0;">On Wednesday, August 28, 2024 3:44:22 PM MST Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:</p>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;margin-right:0;">&gt; Nope. It is enough that the script that packages the software for</p>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;margin-right:0;">&gt; Debian removes some files. That script can be shared in the project</p>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;margin-right:0;">&gt; itself, or written by the Deabian package maintainer. Like this script</p>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;margin-right:0;">&gt; that creates different files archives, oriented for different</p>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin