[UbuntuWomen] Ubuntu, women and artwork...

[Vid Ayer]

On 5/4/07, Elizabeth Bevilacqua <lyz at princessleia.com> wrote:
>
> People are getting quite upset and I want to make sure we are clear as
> to what is Official in Ubuntu and what is not.

Ubuntu is still about the community, who get to decide what
constitutes every aspect of this OS with openness and transparency in
discussions.  If many women (and men) don't approve or feel strongly
about the way women are being portayed by Ubuntu (even if it is not
official),  then we need to listen to "diversity" too as Ubuntu is
about humanity after all.


> === Official ===
>
> Still included in the ubuntu-calendar package.

To be clear, I was not discussing the ubuntu-calendar package. It just
got added/mixed in the discussion like it usually happens on a list.


> These are the ones that we can speak up about if we feel the need, but
> it's already been hashed out quite thoroughly. Susana posted that great
> link about the discussion back in 2004:
>
> http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/ubuntu-traffic/u20041015_08.html#1

hmm... remember reading that while lurking around in Feb 2005 (Mako
even had it on his site/blog, but I dont have the URL now).



> === Not official ===
>
> Aside from expressing our displeasure at people putting such images
> online, there really isn't much we can do about the non-official ones.

Not exactly, there is a lot that Ubuntu/Canonical can do in this
regard. See Ubuntu's trademark policy[0]. While it encourages
"community advocacy", this freedom could be misused (here to depict
women as in that first link).

It is significant since Canonical has reduced the number of CD's being
shipped, rather encourages people to burn/download it themselves.  So
for example: A picture that has the Ubuntu logo, does look "official"
at first glance to any lay person getting a CD with that jacketcover.
AFAIK, anyone receiving CD's this way may/maynot be interested in
researching if the picture on a jacket cover comes from an official
repository or not.

So does it mean that anyone can create tasteless pictures of women,
slap the ubuntu logo on it {from [0]}, burn CD's (non-commercially)
and we do nothing because its non-official, no money exchanged hands
and was within trademark policy ?

Next, the para on  "Commentary and parody" [0]
[quote]
In any event, once a project has left the open source project phase or
otherwise become a commercial project, this policy does not authorize
any use of the Trademarks in connection to that project.
[/unquote]

This line does not mention anything about non-commercial stuff. Does
that mean its ok for non-commercial works to use pictures of women as
they deem fit.

I am not a legal eagle but I hope folks see the pandora's box all of
this opens ?

[0] http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy



> Ubuntu is NOT using these two in an Official capacity to promote the OS.

It does not have to (in an official capacity), but it can still be
misused (see above note) in many ways.

IMO, freedom and creativity should be encouraged but when it oversteps
a majority of peoples sensibilities, in this case we are talking about
half the world's population, different cultures/nationality, etc.. we
need to step back and think, again.

-- 
Vid
http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/VidAyer