Hello,
in our open-source project Foreman we use various Linux distro icons, example screenshot:
http://theforeman.org/static/images/screenshots/host_listing.png
Now, we have a patch from our community which adds support for IBM AIX UNIX and it was coming with logo created from the official graphics:
http://www.recarta.co.uk/sites/default/files/images/ibm-aix-logo_0.jpg
(This is just a random copy returned by Google)
We have removed that from the patch and accepted it without the provided logo for now, it was apparently resampled (smaller) version of the official IBM logo.
Now, there is quite strict trademark policy by IBM which explicitly disallows the use of their logos:
http://www.ibm.com/legal/us/en/copytrade.shtml
On the other hand, they allow "fair use" to some degree, which is not explicitly specified in that document. Can be icon of that (small) size considered as "fair use"?
It is legal to draw similar logo in GIMP (blue circle, green filling with "AIX" in white) and then scale that down to size of an icon and use that in our software?
If not, do we have any other options? I guess the second option could be to create similar logo which would be different from the one presented (different colors, font maybe). What kind of changes is considered as different enough?
To be clear, Foreman is not yet in Fedora, but we are planning to include it as all our dependencies get accepted. It's a long process, we provide Fedora repositories with our software for now.
Thanks for help and happy New Year all!
On 01/03/2014 11:54 AM, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
It is legal to draw similar logo in GIMP (blue circle, green filling with "AIX" in white) and then scale that down to size of an icon and use that in our software?
I wouldn't advise that. I'd ask IBM for permission first, especially given that they have explicit rules about the use of their marks.
~tom
== ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> OSAS @ Red Hat University Outreach || Fedora Special Projects || Fedora Legal
On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 05:54:51PM +0100, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
Hello,
in our open-source project Foreman we use various Linux distro icons, example screenshot:
http://theforeman.org/static/images/screenshots/host_listing.png
FWIW you're on shaky ground even with Linux distro icons. See for example the license for using the Ubuntu (or even Fedora) trademarks.
I started a thread about this a while back, see:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604
Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to download the icon from the virtual machine and display that. It doesn't store or ship any icons itself. Virt-manager (and others) are able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.
If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we display the icons.
I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however. Perhaps it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images?
Rich.
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 05:17:56PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604
Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to download the icon from the virtual machine and display that. It doesn't store or ship any icons itself. Virt-manager (and others) are able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.
If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we display the icons.
I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however. Perhaps it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images?
Quite an interesting idea, Rich. We do support both image based and pxe-based provisioning, we'd need to do both.
What could be feasible would be to extend the puppet agent that runs on the managed host to send the icon for us during the first fact upload.
I will look on this. Thanks.
LZ
On 02/14/2014 10:08 AM, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 05:17:56PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-April/thread.html#1604
Libguestfs works around this issue like this: It offers a way to download the icon from the virtual machine and display that. It doesn't store or ship any icons itself. Virt-manager (and others) are able to display OS icons, including for Windows, using that method.
If you read a bit further down that thread, you'll see that this method should be OK, although there are still limitations in how we display the icons.
I'm not sure what the implications are for Foreman however. Perhaps it can extract the icon from CD / PXE images?
Quite an interesting idea, Rich. We do support both image based and pxe-based provisioning, we'd need to do both.
What could be feasible would be to extend the puppet agent that runs on the managed host to send the icon for us during the first fact upload.
All facts are strings right now, so this won't work; perhaps we could pass the path to the icon to Foremn as a fact and then use the same method as virt-manager to connect to the compute resource and extract it. Let's talk off-list to figure out a workable solution.
I will look on this. Thanks.
LZ
[Copying the message I sent to lzap about how the libguestfs icon inspection works]
The code is all here:
https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/src/inspect-icon.c
You might as well use the API:
http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#inspection http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#guestfs_inspect_get_icon
We don't have a specific example of using this API, but you could adapt this example:
http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-python.3.html#example-2:-inspect-a-virtual-mac...
Put this code:
pngdata = g.inspect_get_icon () if pngdata != "": # some code here that displays the PNG data using your # choice of graphics library
just before the unmount call at the end.
Rich.