"Eddy Petrişor" <eddy.petrisor@gmail.com> wrote in message news:60381eeb0606300133l5fd7aa6cy192b5f80f367df66@mail.gmail.com...
Hello all, I was thinking on making a logo for the Debian Games Team but I need to combine the open use logo with an icon which is distributed under a different license. My questions are: 1) Are any of the following licenses compatible with the Debian Open Use Logo License? a) GPL b) CC-BY 2.0 c) CC-BY-SA 2.0 d) CC-BY-NC 2.0 d) LGPL 2) If any of the licenses above can be combined with the Debian Open Use Logo License, what would be the license terms of the distributed work?
These types of questions keep recurring. The last I heard the legal situation with the logos was a mess.AIUI, the logos are considered trademarks. The "licence" strongly implies that Debian does not claim copyright on the open use logo, but merely trademark rights. That licence is basically summerizing what trademark law allows.
(That is in constrast with the Offical logo's to which Debian claims both tradmark and copyright).
In the case you are speaking of, as far as copyright goes, it can probably be thought of as public domain, so combining it with something will result in a work licenced under the same terms as the other component. However, the trademark issue comes up. The use in your logo would likely imply endorsment, which would require a trademark licence (which is a strange way of saying special permission is needed).
I'm not sure who you need to contact for that permission.[[ What ever happened to resolving this issue? Clearly treating the open use logo as copyrightless, but trademarked is the desired effect, so can we have SPI approve that? Then all we have to do is create a mechanism though which people apply for permision (tradmark licences) to use
the logo in ways that implies sponsorship or endorsment.The offical use licence seems fine as it is, as it requires approval for all use, and so nobody ever asks about licence compatability with it. On a side note, one obvious use of the offical logo that is clearly reasonable, is as a decal that could be applied to machines donated to SPI for use by Debian: "Donated to SPI for use by [Debian offical logo with the word Debian]". That would make it very hard for anybody to ever mistake to whom that machine belongs. ]]