[Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[John Vandenberg]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:31 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> In your earlier comment, which you have now snipped, you asserted that
>> Sv.Wp was doing the wrong thing:
>>
>> "I hope no one thinks Swedish Wikipedians (or anyone else) is free to
>> reuse the Volvo logo
>> without a license."
>
> Not quite. I think Sv.Wp is doing the right thing but with the wrong
> justification.  And I was trying to say I don't think downstream re-users
> should infer the appearance of the Volvo logo on Sv.Wp that they have the
> right to reuse it as a public-domain image.

It is tagged by Commons as PD.  If you don't believe the PD
justification is appropriate, or opens us up to legal disputes, then
we need to spawn a separate discussion about PD-text.

> As I see the energy poured into the question of whether the Wikipedia should
> use copyrighted and trademarked logos (which they are already licensed to
> use!), I cannot help but agree with the sentiment expressed earlier that the
> Swedish Wikipedians have come up with a solution in search of a problem.

The Swedish Wikipedia has drawn a line in the sand that all content in
article space should meet the definition of "free
content".[http://freedomdefined.org/]  The reason for using this
criteria is so that there is not a need to consult a different license
for each logo in order to determine what uses are acceptable.

The availability of a WMF license for their logos is useful for some
purposes, however the Wikimedia logos do not meet the criteria of free
content.  If Wp.Sv doesn't want to accept non-free licenses in article
space, then it is understandable that the WMF logos need to go as
well.

--
John Vandenberg