[VisCom] Logo/branding effort

[Markus Neteler]

On 9/29/06, Venkatesh Raghavan <venka.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Michael P. Gerlek <mpg at lizardtech.com> wrote:
> >
> > I started looking around some more to see who is using trademarks in the
> > open source world.  FSF doesn't say anything anywhere about trademarks of
> > it's distinctive hand-drawn Gnu symbol or the FSF name.  Creative Commons
> > does not use a (tm) on their logo -- but they do have a page carefully
> > describing use of their trademarks.  OSI uses a (tm) on their logo; Apache
> > does not; the Python Foundation does...  Aargh!
> >
> > If anything, I feel comforted knowing that its not just me: the rest of
> > the world is seriously confused by this issue too.
> >
> > Looking forward to having the Board tell me how to think,
>
> In situations like this, I feel that it would be best to
> rely on "The Wisdom of Crowds" (ISBN 0-349-11707-1).
>
> Regards
>
> Venka

I am certainly not the best informed person on logo usage, but
I just throw in the 20+ years experience with the GRASS GIS
logo (http://grass.itc.it/download/logograms.php).

As far as I know, the public domain CERL version is still somewhere
around; our current version is probably GPL'ed (who knows, is it
part of the software or the Web site or ...?). Most files on the page
above were generated from the old logo which I digitized in XFig
sone years ago (so, my copyright?).

In short: I am not aware of any relevant logo abuse in the past.
Why? Probably because the name/product is so well established
that abuse doesn't make sense at all.

Personally, I even like the creative approach of people to use
it in related environments:
* GRASS user conference 2002 (there also on T-Shirts etc):
  http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/conferences/GRASS2002/proceedings/proceedings/logo_d.gif
* A translator of my "GRASS in a nutshell" text for MUM3 made this:
  http://www.gdf-hannover.de/lit_html/nutshell_v10_fr/img1.png
* And, hey, people even animated the logo:
   http://grass.itc.it/images/grass_logo_animated.gif

This sort of community approach is quite nice.
Starting to sue people for that is at least out of my personal scope and also
out of the scope of the GRASS Development Team (another nice non-legal
entity :-)

cheers
Markus  (<- you may call me naive now)