Re: Making webplatform.org skin publicly available?

Hi, folks-

I'm hearing rough consensus around this approach of making everything 
available, but adding restrictions around using the logo (which we 
already do), and asking people to respect our uniqueness in stylistic 
choices such as colors, borders, backgrounds, font-choice, and other 
visual assets.

Unless we hear dissent, let's move forward with that approach.


Now, let's turn the conversation to the technical matter... how can we 
do this technically, and keep it all in sync? Could we have a script 
that pushes updates to our git repo, and from there to github?

(I'd like a similar automatic, simple approach for our MediaWiki 
extensions.)

Regards-
-Doug

On 4/3/13 12:25 PM, Ryan Lane wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Janet Swisher <jswisher@mozilla.com
>  <mailto:jswisher@mozilla.com>> wrote:
>
> On 4/3/13 4:22 AM, Tobie Langel wrote:
>> On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Chris Mills wrote:
>>> On 2 Apr 2013, at 20:31, Ryan Lane<rlane32@gmail.com
>>> (mailto:rlane32@gmail.com)>
>>> <mailto:rlane32@gmail.com(mailto:rlane32@gmail.com)>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 5:55 AM, Tobie Langel<tobie@fb.com
>>>> (mailto:tobie@fb.com)>
>>>> <mailto:tobie@fb.com(mailto:tobie@fb.com)>  wrote: If by "skin"
>>>> you mean actual design (color palette, typography, etc.), this
>>>> should certainly be open-sourced for outside contributions, but
>>>> also protected against being re-used as is elsewhere (which
>>>> would dilute the brand).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's basically impossible to open source something, then
>>>> disallow its use. If we distribute the skin we just have to
>>>> accept other sites will look like webplatform.
>>> Too true.
>> So I'm not familiar with how the skinning precisely works here. But
>> maybe we could open-source all of it except for a config file
>> containing the font choice and color scheme?
>
> I'm not sure about the technical details, but a determined person
> would be able to reverse-engineer those details if they want to make
> a copy-cat site. Also, holding back some files from being open
> sourced sends a mixed message about the project's commitment to
> openness.
>
> The strategy that Mozilla uses is to open source the code whenever
> possible, but protect the trademarks (name and logo). (This is not
> without controversy among free software purists -- search keyword
> "ice weasel".) I think that is a reasonable balance between openness
> and brand preservation.
>
>
> This is also Wikimedia's approach. It works generally well.
>
> - Ryan
>

Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2013 16:32:11 UTC