[Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Erik Moeller]

2010/3/30 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>:
> I would prefer that Sv.Wp make an exception for WMF logos being used
> in conjunction with interwiki links, such as on
> sv:template:wikisource.  To me, those uses are part of the UI of the
> project, and fall under fair use of the trademark.
>
> However, I've seen this non-free logo debate too many times to be
> surprised that there are lots of people willing to make a tough stance
> on it.

They have at least kept the logos on the Main Page.

I'll note that the licensing policy passed by the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees (
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy )
specifically permits project communities to develop exemptions, with
logos being listed as an example. The Swedish Wikipedia community can
make a community decision to remove these logos from articles and
templates, but there's no hobgoblin of consistency that forces them
to. In fact, the Swedish Wikipedia community could develop an explicit
exemption policy only for WMF logos within the boundaries of the
policy. The policy also requires exempt files to be properly tagged,
so any third party re-user can exclude them if they want to be on the
safe side.

Even without going into the licensing policy, I would personally
express the view that it would be completely reasonable to interpret
sister project templates to be a part of the navigational elements of
our websites that just happens to live inside article space. These
templates are in fact frequently filtered by re-users because they
provide limited utility outside the Wikimedia context. Categorizing
them in ways that are friendly to re-users is probably a greater
service to them than a logo purge, and the elimination of identifying
marks from our navigational structure clearly harms our own ability to
develop a coherent reader experience.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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