Make terms of logo use explicit (and provide official versions)

[tobyweston]

I would expect the logo to be trademark of EPFL but have found it difficult to confirm or understand if it can be used commercially or otherwise for activities related to Scala training (books, video courses, tutorials etc).

It would be great to add this as a seperate section to the licence page available from the scala-lang.org site (https://www.scala-lang.org/license/) or otherwise add something here.

https://github.com/scala/scala-lang/blob/master/license.md

It might be nice to go one step further and make a png/vector available for reuse (assuming it can be reused!).

I don't actually know the terms of reuse but the closest I found were these:

https://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/2647.html
https://users.scala-lang.org/t/what-are-the-legal-guidelines-for-using-scala-logo/1191

Happy to do a PR if it helps.

[SethTisue]

this is Scala Center territory...

@darjutak is this your department these days?

[sjrd]

That would be for me ;)

Unfortunately it seems nobody really knows, besides the fact that it's copyright EPFL. It was never given an express license by its author. I will put a research on this topic on my todo list.

[tobyweston]

Thanks.

Whilst I’m there, how about the lovely scenery photo from the landing page? Can that be reused in the context of edu?

[martijnhoekstra]

@sjrd for your todo list, apart from the copyright, there is also the trademark, which is a separate concern.

[SethTisue]

most recent verbiage on this I've seen is @sjrd's https://users.scala-lang.org/t/using-scala-logo/6332/3

[SethTisue]

examples from other languages:

• https://www.typescriptlang.org/branding/
• https://foundation.rust-lang.org/policies/logo-policy-and-media-guide/
• https://go.dev/blog/go-brand

[windymelt]

The other day I too ran into a problem regarding logos. I needed a clearly licensed logo to avoid legal liability.

If the logo is distributed as an official asset with a free license, it would help to improve the presence of this language.

[JD557]

Just a reminder (for who might be reading this in the future) that the Rust Foundation proposed some changes regarding trademark usage that were not well received (that blogpost also includes an archive.org link to the old policy).

It might be worth it to keep an eye on how the situation evolves to avoid making the same mistakes.