Decide on if and if so, how to implement the Drupal wordmark in core

first of all, LICENSE.txt is actually in CVS (http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/drupal/LICENSE.txt)
what we're doing with the license is keeping one centralized version of it, and adding it during the packaging to contrib module to ensure GPL compliance.

but it can't be checked in to cvs.drupal.org because if it is, then it must be GPLed and we can't protect the branding of a GPLed wordmark. Or something like this.

So that we don't have that debate again… :-p

1. Only GPL items can go in cvs.drupal.org because our CVS policy says so.
2. We could change our CVS policy and our LICENSE file to say that everything but the wordmark is GPL.
3. But some people (and linux distros) won't use/include/whatever drupal if there is a non-GPL part of it.
4. Therefore the easiest way to get around these issues to include the wordmark using the tarball packaging scripts. People needing a GPL-only distro of Drupal can get it directly from CVS. And normal tarball downloads will include the Drupal branding.

That said, it seems to me we would still need to edit the LICENSE file included with the drupal tarball, so that it notes the wordmark license exception. The wordmark is (or will be) included in the tarball, after all.

But we desperately need this in D7. I want to see a shiny Drupal wordmark in our installer! And possibly in the Seven theme, too.

Does that mean the downloaded tarball will not be GPL?
IANAL, but I would go back and inquire why a GPL'd image brand cannot be protected (GPL does not mean there are no copyrights, it is just a usage license).

What do other open source projects do to protect their brand?

I don't believe you can reliably protect a logo that is so close to just text. Why not publishing this logo in GPL and getting done with it? While the trademark is important, the logo we picked (a simple text) has no real value.

@chx: a "wordmark" (in the common sense of the trademark law) is the usage of a word. It's not the protection of the logo per se, but of the usage of the word. The current "Drupal Trademark" is actually a wordmark. It's independent of the fact that you cannot reliably protect a logo that has nothing special.

Damien,

A wordmark, also sometimes word mark, subset of the term logotype, is a standardized graphic representation of the name of a company, institution, or product name used for purposes of identification and branding

.

Let's not argue whether or not our wordmark is "unique enough" to be protected; that's just silly. The "Drupal" in the wordmark above is not using an unmodified font and any designer can easily point out the unique properties of it.

This is not the issue to argue about we should or should not protect the wordmark. This issue assumes the wordmark needs protecting and is about how we protect it while still including it in a downloadable tarball.

So back to the issue at hand…

what we're doing with the license is keeping one centralized version of it, and adding it during the packaging to contrib module to ensure GPL compliance.

Since we are already doing this for contrib tarballs, it seems we already have some code in our packaging script that can checkout a file from an alternate source and place it into the tarball. I haven't seen the packaging scripts, but it should be easy to do the following for Drupal 7:

1. Checkout project into temp directory.
2. Checkout wordmark.png from a special repository for non-GPL materials.
3. Take the wordmark.png and copy it over the existing themes/seven/logo.png file in the temp directory.
4. Ensure that the LICENSE.txt in the temp directory has language noting the GPL exception for the Drupal wordmark file.*
5. Package up the temp directory into a tarball.

* LICENSE.txt exception text: Its nice that we have a single source for our current LICENSE.txt; we should keep that exactly as is. So we either need to have a modified version of LICENSE.txt describing the wordmark exception (also stored in the non-GPL materials repository) or we need to have a separate LICENSE-WORDMARK.txt that is to be placed next to the LICENSE.txt in the tarball.

I think the discussion at http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/drupal-org-logo-trademark makes clear that the wordmark was never originally intended to be included in the downloadable Drupal software. So if we are talking about changing that here, I don't see why we can't talk about proposing a change in its licensing as well. And the alternative of making Drupal less than 100% GPL (or rather, trying to distribute two versions of Drupal, only one of which is 100% GPL) really seems like it might be too big to decide in some random issue in the "base system" component of the issue queue - at least not without a lot more people participating here :)

Given that both Garland and Bartik already use the Druplicon all over the place, I'm still not sure I understand the rationale behind using a different logo in this one place anyway? And the screenshot in #15 shows that the word "Drupal" already appears in big letters at the top of this page, so adding a logo that also has the word "Drupal" in big letters doesn't seem to add much. I think we'd at least want to retitle "Drupal database update" to "Database update" if doing this.

@koleary posted a whole set of mockups in #1260716: Improve language onboarding user experience that use a derviative of the Drupal wordmark (combined with a derviative of the Druplicon to form an 8), to be used in the Drupal 8 (installer) branding. I'm just posting it here for further discussion to untangle that question from that issue:

The whole set of mockups can be found at http://drupal.org/node/1260716#comment-5069806

This might be a silly question:

If you can't add the Drupal wordmark into the tarball why not just pull that image in from a remote server? ie if you install drupal AND you are online, then the drupal wordmark is pulled in... if you are offline, then the druplicon is used.

This could also be used to get a better idea of the number of installations of drupal.

Just my 2 cents