2011/4/8 Sam Geeraerts
<address@hidden>
address@hidden wrote:
Hi,
I'm setting a free software service for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSM's) and am promoting gNewSense as "the" operating system.
Cool.
Can I use the gNewSense logo and related artwork as my business logo?
I assume you refer to the current "palm tree" logo. We have new artwork for the upcoming release. Not that it matters much which you use, but I don't remember Luis specifying a license for the new artwork. Luis, can you comment?
The files in the tarball[1] have no licence yet, sorry. What license would you consider better for this?
As for you getting our blessing to use it: I don't see an immediate problem for gNewSense with it, but I'll ask some people who might have insights on this. The Trademark Policy page on the Debian wiki [1] is an interesting read, though different from our case (no trademark).
I'd recommend David to create a new logo for his business. If I were you, I'd like my business to have its own identity :)
p.s. I realize that the logo is under GPL, however, from the word go I'd like to work with the Free Software / GNU movement in general and the gNewSense team in particular.
I hope you've considered the consequences of choosing gNewSense and its logo. Having the same logo will tie your business closely to this distro. There's more to that than free distro ideals and FSF endorsement. Practical issues like development resources or how well you trust the people that run the distro and its infrastructure.
Also think about the consequences of building your business on a strictly free distro. We have broken the graphical interface for some time in the past, and we may do so again if any freedom issues with it arise.
I like your idea, so I'm not trying to scare you off. I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into. :)
[1] http://wiki.debian.org/ProposedTrademarkPolicy