[Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Marco Chiesa]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester a gmail.com> wrote:

>
> We want to use a bare minimum of unfree content, wherever possible. That is not the same as NO unfree content. It does not follow that because we cannot have ZERO unfree content, than we should be able to use everyone elses unfree stuff. That is not a logical conclusion, nor is it rational.
>
> The fact is, regardless of any other circumstance, the Wikimedia logos are one, small, limited exception. Comparing them to Coca-Cola, or Volvo, or anything else is ridiculous, because those companies do not operate Wikipedia.

I think the point here is that different projects have a different
attitude to non-free media, so that everyone wrote a different EDP
when they were asked to. Some projects allow the use of non-free
material under fair use (that's the case for en.wp and a lot more),
some don't (I think that's the case for sv.wp, es.wp and others). Now,
most company logos are copyrighted, so they can only be used in the
projects that allow non-free media and in the pages regarding the
company or its products. In this sense, since we adopt NPOV, the WMF
is not different from any other company, like Coca-Cola or the WWF if
we want to stick to non-profits. So, if we don't allow the use of the
logos of Coca-Cola or of the WWF (because they're copyrighted), then
it seems logical not to use the logos of the WMF projects in the
articles describing them. The situation is different for the UI (we
are Wikipedia and we identify ourselves by our logo) and possibly for
the inter-project links icons (because they are a link to the project,
not to the page describing the project). Therefore, I think the policy
of sv.wp is logical and I support it, although I do not necessarily
think it's the best decision.

Cruccone