[Zope-dev] Legal formalities to accept log and design

[Tres Seaver]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Baiju M wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Christophe Combelles wrote:
>>> Jens Vagelpohl a écrit :
>>> On 1/24/10 13:08 , Baiju M wrote:
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>     I would like to know the legal formalities required
>>>>>> to accept a logo (with special font).
>>>>>> Also I would like to know the same for web design.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is there any guideline for Zope Foundation ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BlueBream team want to use a logo designed by an external person:
>>>>>> http://muthukadan.net/bluebream/bluebream-logo-v1.png
>>>>>> The font used there (Perizia: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Perizia_fonts) is
>>>>>> designed by the same designer and released under GPL.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One of my friend has offered a web design for the site (not done yet).
>>> All that's perfectly fine. As Andreas said, there are no guildelines, as
>>> long as you are not using material that's already trademarked and
>>> copyrighted.
>>>
>>>> maybe just be sure the original author won't claim anything in the future?
>>>> ie. the logo should be released with a free licence. Just to avoid the kind of
>>>> troubles we had with new.zope.org
>>> Using a GPL font for the logo surely won't force us to abandon the ZPL,
>>> no reason for concern there. The logo is nice, by the way.
>> Fonts and the GPL are complicated[1].  As that essay notes, under U.S.
>> copyright law, the "look" of a font cannot be copyrighted, which ought
>> to mean that an image which contains pixels derived from rendering the
>> font is not a derived work of the font:  it doesn't contain a copy or
>> transformation of anything copyrightable.
>>
>> However, the issue gets muddy, even before you consided non-U.S. law.
>> So, before checking the image into the zope.org SVN repository (which
>> forbids any GPL'ed content without explicit approval), please check to
>> see that the font author has used the FSF's standard "font exception"
>> clause[2]:
>>
>>  As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font,
>>  and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the
>>  document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to
>>  be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not
>>  however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered
>>  by the GNU General Public License.
>>
>> If not, ask for the author to include that clause in the license for the
>> font (and document that to the foundation board, if the exception is not
>> published with the version of the font you use).  Or ask for a more
>> permissive (non-copyleft) licence, such as one of the Creative Commons
>> licenses.  If neither of those options is available, then I would ask
>> the foundation board for permission to check in the image.
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis
>> [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException
> 
> The font is "Released under GNU GPL v3, with font exception." (from font file)
> 
> http://hiraneffects.blogspot.com/2008/03/thanks-perizia-is-now-font.html?showComment=1205148360000#c7861527171323151625

Great.  AFICT, that removes any doubt about the copyright status of the
font as used in the logo.  You should be able to check it in, if you
made it yourself, or if the designer who made it for you did it under
terms which transfered ownership of the image copyright to you (as an
employee or as "work-for-hire")./			


Tres.
- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAktd3qcACgkQ+gerLs4ltQ6GDgCfd9zIzcYyA/ktKCYjUVredsdz
3+MAn2TtWuEU5f0xltBLwFSrUR1BKWOn
=YYJb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----