Daniel Arnold wrote:
How about creating a "community" icon? An icon that can be used by anyone who likes, supports, reuses, whatever the project?
The problem with this idea is the "Commons brand" you mention: compared to the number of people who are familiar with Wikipedia, there are not all that many who know what Commons is, and I'm worried that we won't be doing our branding any good by having two (competing) logos. Imagine how odd it would be if you saw a page with numerous references to Commons with one icon, but when you actually visited Commons you started to see a completely different icon. The only way to ease confusion here would be to have the community icon be a derivative of the normal icon, but that sends us back to square one since we can't create derivative works like that.
So let us create a cute Wikimedia Commons community logo and then we'll see which logo wins, and which logo makes a stronger and more living Commons brand: The current restriced one or the free one.
But if a new logo becomes the commonly-used one, wouldn't it be prudent for the Foundation to copyright that one as well? Aren't all of these logos copyrighted in the first place because we want to be able to control their use? As Commons becomes more and more well-known, IMO it's important that we have one, consistent, WMF-controlled logo (and visual identity in general).
Regards,