I wanted to hear people’s thoughts on this. I have concerns about its design, but I do think that the idea of having a logo to symbolize free software apart from the FSF is beneficial; free software should be bigger beyond the FSF. While open source has the OSI logo, I have not found any evidence of an agreed logo to represent free software. The closest that currently exists is the FSF logo but again, I do think that a free software logo should be independent of any organization and should encapsulate the idea/movement ideally.
Strange that I’ve never seen that logo after 25 years of using Linux. I’m not sure if I like it, because it is too easily confused with the Copyleft logo:
I’m guessing that the idea was to incorporate the Copyleft logo into the free software logo, but I think it creates confusion. However, I’m not sure how to visually represent the idea of freedom and software, so I can’t think of a better logo for free software.
If a logo conveys software freedoms, I would expect it to inform about the rights, which means indicating the license. Some licenses have logos. GNU licenses have logos. Here is an example:
By the way, the logo which you brought up for discussion is featured as the “Free Software logo” in the GNU project art gallery.
What I’m asking for is a logo that is not tied to any specific license either. The OSI logo is recognizable but isn’t the MIT license logo, or the BSD license.
Currently, if I were to show this image to a random person in the tech space that cares about open source and stuff like that, I’d say 99 out of 100 times, no one would recognize the image I linked. It would help to get endorsement from some influential figure as well as agreement within the community.
Aside: The link I made to the GNU art gallery uses text fragments, a relatively new browser feature, which won’t work on older browsers.
I must admit that I just overlooked the link to the gallery in your original post, despite following all the other links. As a side note, Discourse does not register me clicking when I choose to open the link in a new tab.
So, you suggest promoting the use of that logo instead of the OSI logo because it is not associated with the OSI or the FSF. The fact that the GNU project have it featured in the gallery is good enough endorsement by the FSF for me. I would not expect the FSF or the GNU project investing into promoting it substantially, which should fit the purpose of not being associated with the FSF. The major hurdle would be to beat the OSI logo widespread adoption, I expect.
I forgot about the free software logo because I never encountered it in use after seeing it the first time years ego. But this should not be a problem in practice because there should always be opportunity to give more context, for example, via any accompanying text label, a hyperlink, a tooltip, etc. I would not confuse it with other logos at a glance.
I was using the OSI logo as an example and because of its relevance to the topic. The OSI logo should stay as it is.
I believe “beating” the OSI logo’s adoption is a non-goal here because it would add friction between those that adopt the broader open source view against those that prefer the free software stance. I don’t think it’s worth that for no real benefit. I would like to see some symbol, which it doesn’t need to be the original image I posted, promoted and recognized.
The Fediverse logo got some attention across a few different tech places and I would like to see something similar for free software in other places.
