Xapian discuss - Sep 2009 - Powered by Xapian

Hi,

I'm not so far, by now, of publicly releasing the next version of our 
web site which is extensively using Xapian, so I thought it was time to 
say "thank you" by adding in the footer and in the "credits"
page of my
site the Xapian logo with a link back to the Xapian web site.

I was surprised to discover how hard it was for me to find how to do... 
I'm not a novice user and I know pretty well the Xapian web site and its 
content, but I only found :
- the "MoreUsers" entry of the wiki [1] which states "We'd
love a
reciprocal "powered by Xapian" or similar link to help spread the
word"
but does not provide any logo or guidelines on how to do so;
- the "Users" page of the main web site [2] which contains a
"Powered by
Xapian" logo but does not if/how this logo can be used.

I know that creating a reciprocal link is not a requirement (and I 
appreciate this point) but it would be easier for users wishing to 
create such a link to have a dedicated page (e.g. like this one [3]...)
Looking at the "current users" web page, it seems that there are very 
few web sites which are showing the "powered by xapian" button (e.g.
gmane).
It would help to spread the word about Xapian...

For now, some questions:
- can I use the "powered by" logo found on [2]? what is the license?
(I
guess the answer, but...)
- does this logo exist in other dimensions/backgrounds?
- can I modify it? (as is, it is quite large, and the textual part of 
the logo does not suit well on a French web site)
- does anybody have a vectorial version (svg, eps..) of this logo or of 
the big Xapian logo [4]? (it would help)

Cheers,

Daniel

[1] http://trac.xapian.org/wiki/MoreUsers
[2] http://xapian.org/users
[3] http://www.sphinxsearch.com/buttons.html
[4] http://xapian.org/xapian-logo.png

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 03:50:15PM +0200, Daniel M?nard
wrote:
> I was surprised to discover how hard it was for me to find how to do... 
> I'm not a novice user and I know pretty well the Xapian web site and
its
> content, but I only found :
> - the "MoreUsers" entry of the wiki [1] which states
"We'd love a
> reciprocal "powered by Xapian" or similar link to help spread the
word"
> but does not provide any logo or guidelines on how to do so;
> - the "Users" page of the main web site [2] which contains a
"Powered by
> Xapian" logo but does not if/how this logo can be used.
Thanks for raising this.  We should have some more helpful guidance,
and that might help encourage people to add a link.
> For now, some questions:
> - can I use the "powered by" logo found on [2]? what is the
license? (I
> guess the answer, but...)
I don't think we have an explicit licence on it.

It was actually drawn in a "xapian logo competition" by a tweakers.net
user, and I don't think a licence was specified.  We really should have
picked up on this at the time - I did try to make contact later but
failed.

It's probably reasonable to assume that it was provided to us to use as
a logo for Xapian, but I'd certainly be happier with an explicit
licence.

I've just done a quick bit of internet stalking (um, I mean sleuthing)
and I seem to have found an email address for him, so I'll try to
contact him once I checked I remembered the right user name.

I guess we should think about what licence is most appropriate.  I don't
think we want to demand verbatim use, but also I'm not sure a completely
liberal licence is appropriate for what is essentially branding.
> - does this logo exist in other dimensions/backgrounds?
> - can I modify it? (as is, it is quite large, and the textual part of 
> the logo does not suit well on a French web site)
> - does anybody have a vectorial version (svg, eps..) of this logo or of 
> the big Xapian logo [4]? (it would help)
Jenny Black drew this SVG version a couple of years ago, which should
be good for making resized bitmap versions, and for different
backgrounds:

http://oligarchy.co.uk/xapian/patches/xapian-logo-square.svg

Cheers,
    Olly