Re: License the Hydra logo as CC-BY-NC-ND

It seems that most if not all of the concerns expressed in that #181 issue thread would be much better handled through a trademark rather than a strangely restrictive license. (Strangely because it couldn’t be more dissonant with a supposedly open standard and a surrounding open tooling ecosystem. For example, it would be prohibited from being shown in Wikipedia.)

Who guards the W3C logo from misuse and misappropriation, and using which means? Shouldn’t this community try and mirror that?

Perhaps what is really needed is a new logo, for which the creator is willing to assign copyright to the W3C or another community body, rather than have it rest with a single person (who can become disinterested, incapacitated, etc, thus becoming unable to respond to and defend copyright questions and infringement). The comment by filip26 makes a good point: regardless of the original intentions, perception matters and it matters a great deal.

 -hilmar

> On Aug 24, 2025, at 9:30 AM, Asbjørn Ulsberg <asbjorn@ulsberg.no> wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow Hydranians!
> 
> The license for the Hydra logo remains unclear, making its use outside of the Hydra specification difficult. The discussion has been going on for quite a while in the following GitHub issue, so please read up on that if you haven’t already:
> 
> https://github.com/HydraCG/Specifications/issues/181
> 
> This e-mail is an attempt to gather consensus among the active Hydra community members on whether CC-BY-NC-ND would be an acceptable and good license for the logo.
> 
> If you read this and think CC-BY-NC-ND is a good license for the Hydra logo, please respond to this e-mail with a “+1” or similar positive reaction. If not, please respond with your thoughts.
> 
> I also welcome everyone to join the discussion on the above GitHub issue.
> 
> Thanks!
> Best regards,
> -- 
> Asbjørn Ulsberg.         -=|=-         asbjorn@ulsberg.no
> «He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»
> 
> 

-- 
Hilmar Lapp -:- lappland.io