MJ Ray wrote:

To be honest, the tagline on the logo doesn't bother me greatly, but please make a logo available under a free software licence ASAP (GPL?) so that I can localise it as needed, like as part of the koha release.

The above is a very good point. Some users might wish to change the background colour or text colour to match their web design and still have it say "Koha". Mike -- Michael Lake Chemistry, Materials & Forensic Science, UTS Ph: 9514 1725 Fx: 9514 1460 [pls ignore idiot lawyer's msg below] -- UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.

Rachel Hamilton-Williams a écrit :

OK Here is what I've "got" out if it, and what my logo plans are, so please shout if your situation isn't covered,.... 1/. I'll do a series of logos on colours..... - black on white - white on black - black on grey/neutral

Do you mean black on "empty" ?

- black on green - black on teal - so that can just put onto Pauls current page etc I could do a range of primaries too - blue, yellow, red if you think that would be helpful - because while I can do them with transparent background they do still get a bit of dithering on a coloured background I think 4/. I would like to do a version which is "free library system" in french, if you send me the correct wording/spelling for that - we think that would be pretty cute :-)

In french, I think we should write : "SIGB libre" SIGB meaning "Système Intégré de Gestion de Bibliothèque" (=ILS) I don't see a short word used in france for "library system" and SIGB is perfectly understood. French is usually longer than english :-(

5/. You can put your own words under "koha" to suit your situation that is fine 6/. I've done an example page of how I think the logo stuff could be used with the new features etc.... http://katipo.co.nz/gallery/album103/opac_home_concept_teal http://katipo.co.nz/gallery/album103/opac_concept_home_review

wow ! if I could have only 10% of your designing skills...

I'm not interested in protecting the logo for *katipo* but I really would like to protect it for *koha* - does that seem possible?

Good question. That I extent to share a question I have now : Some french companies seems to be more and more interested by Koha the ILS. Some of them being involved in Free Software for a long time, some not at all. So, i'm looking for a solution to "protect" Koha & libraries in France. 2 kinds of protections : * protecting Koha to prevent having a large company selling services on the product, but with specific extension not shared with the Koha project. The GPL say that a developper must give CUSTOMERS the same rights than the one he got. So we could imagine a large company saying to customers "ok, it's GPL", but giving the code only to customers. But I know french libraries : they will never take/have possibility to give the code to "the project" back. And they will be caught in the same problems as with closed software. * protecting libraries : I think we need in France a "label" to say "ok, this company is involved in Koha, know the product & can help you". To avoid anti-geeks that could be a counter-testimony of the quality of the product. My idea (not done) is to register Koha & the koha logo as a trademark in France. Then create what we call in france a "GIE" (Economical Interested Group) and saying : * the trademark Koha is free for any non commercial purposes * the software is a GPL software * anyone wanting to sell commercial services on Koha must be a member of the GIE * anyone entering the GIE must : - give some resources to the community - sign that he will give to the koha project all it's code and be sincerely involved in "free software goals". It's just an idea for instance, pls give me your opinion(s) if you have one. -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)

I really don't want to write reams on this topic, as it's a necessary evil rather than something I love doing. Also, the more I write on it, the more likely I am to fluff a line and get the wrong meaning, especially these days. I've checked the following twice, but excuse errors ;-) Rachel wrote:

I need some help on the whole "what license thing" - the situation I'm least keen on, is say the "egg" being associated with some other product/company name - ie becoming dissociated from Koha and attached to something else. IS that covered by the GPL type license?

No. If it's another library system which is attempting to pass itself off as koha, then it may be a fraud (legal name varies between jurisdictions). You can register a trademark to make it simpler, but there are two large gaps which many people don't seem to notice: 1. For free software like koha, anyone can use the trademark as long as it's an honest description of the origin of the goods - that is, they are actually distributing something based on koha. This is the same rule that allows used car dealers to advertise MGs as MGs. 2. For other things like a hockey club, they could use it because the field of a trademark is usually declared at registration and koha isn't related to hockey or anything similar. I haven't looked at non-English trademark law, but I expect similar things exist in many places. One can use copyright licensing to prevent both of those uses, but you have the same arguments as against forbidding copying of programs. I hope most of koha-devel see giving some copyright permission is A Good Thing. On the shoulders of giants and all that. They might do a really great version of it and then we might want to use that. Logos often seem to be restrictively licensed and, to be honest, I think it's a massive pain in the backside. Just look at all the trouble that the Mozilla Foundation logos are causing, or even debian's own "open use" logo. Fortunately, the debian one is being fixed (slowly). If a logo is released as free software, you have difficulty restricting its use. That's just as bad/good as the rest of the system. I guess I think you're a bit paranoid ;-) Really, what harm would a hockey team using the logo do? Other firms pay good money to sponsor sports clubs. As far as software goes, koha is probably as protected as possible. We can register trademarks, but then you have overhead to enforce it if you want to keep the registration active (as if you don't challenge known unlicensed use then some jurisdictions see it as abandoning the trademark, I'm told). Do we really want legal work just to stand still? Putting the logo under the same licence as the rest of the system would at least keep things as simple as they are. I think asking people to improve ugly logos is fine, but it would be a bit scary if you can force them or else put them in court. MJR/slef PS: Creative Commons licences are not free software licences. Avoid. PPS: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I have been contributing to debian-legal for a few years, mostly sanely. I was cautioned for copyright infringement by a past employer and after that, I thought I'd learn some. I know even less non-English law.