ROOL or RISC OS logo

On social media I’ve observed situations where people “acting in good faith” have inadvertantly made use of the ROOL logo. The ROOL logo if I am correct in my assumption is the property of ROOL and shouldn’t be used to depict RISC OS. The green cog logo should be used instead. If that’s correct and is being enforced by ROOL, it would help if that distinction was made clear on this website. Not only clear, but easy to find.

ROOL? ;)

The ROOL logo if I am correct in my assumption is the property of ROOL and shouldn’t be used to depict RISC OS. The green cog logo should be used instead.

Green cog —> ROL (transferred to 3QD) as used in RO4.3x marketing current link

So, that’s another IPR discussion.

History plays it part too:

I guess we can speculate on who owns what. But, as I’m sure we all know, it’s also about relationships and where the COG was conceived in the above chain of events. How do we define what RISC OS is universally known by? A green cog? Rather than how it’s labelled on the desktop: Raspberry Pi, Acorn, Cloverleaf, RISC OS Direct, …

The green cog logo IMHO would seem to be a reasonable choice.

ROD? ;)

Steve – that was what I thought too, but actually the green cog was/is by Richard Hallas for all RISC OS machines, not just ROL. After a number of discussions, it is the closest we have to a generic logo I think. The main identifying differences are the colour and the central octagon. Richard had many technical reasons for this (some stemming from the PRMs!) which I won’t list here.

The ROOL cog has the colours and a circle in the centre, rather than an octagon.

the green cog was/is by Richard Hallas for all RISC OS machines, not just ROL

He certainly used to make a point of stating this at the time when it was conceived: that it wasn’t tied to any company, strand, version or whatever, but was for the OS as a whole.

Are there any “brand assets” anywhere for people to use, though, or does everyone have to roll their own in Draw?

There was an explanatory article with accompanying zip file containing a few versions of the file. A quick dig around shows up http://foundation.riscos.com/html/features/07/riscos/riscos.htm as the likely URL – but that’s currently giving a 404, and it doesn’t appear to be available from the Wayback Machine.

ROL Logos

Just as a note:

Wikipedia reports the green cogwheel as Public Domain license, hence it seems that it’s always fine to use it for everything that is RISC OS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS#/media/File:Riscos_logo_generic_cogwheel_richard_hallas_lg_cogwheel_x1.svg

On my blog I only use ROOL Logo for articles that are specifically around their software (for example ROOL DDE). That is simply to make it absolutely clear that the article is about releases and/or software produced by ROOL and not about previous versions that could be Acorn or even Castle etc.

Off topic note: In recent years I also took the habits of adding a “disclaimer section” on top of every article, but that is mostly for the internet community lol it seems that some really want that a simple tutorial to be a full “bible” on the specific topic (and even if you do that, then they would complain it’s too long!) :D

Ach, over “eigendom” kan getwist worden. Wanneer iemand iets heeft gemaakt, waarom zou een ander daar dan geen gebruik van mogen maken? Geen mens is origineel, dus alles wat bedacht is, is gebaseerd op dingen die anderen bedacht hebben. Iemand heeft een tandwieltje (een bedenksel van een verre voorzaat) getekend en dat groen gekleurd of van verschillende kleurtjes en dat zou dan door niemand anders gebruikt mogen worden? Ik ben altijd trots geweest wanneer iemand iets van “mij” gebruikte. We (als mensheid) zijn zover gekomen juist doordat we dingen van elkaar gebruikten en daarop voortbouwden. Waar zouden we bijvoorbeeld zijn zonder “open source”?

People create things, and the concept of copyright allows them exclusive rights over their creation in order that they can then make an income (and hence, a living) from said creation. It is somewhat messed up in that one needs permission (and s licence) to quote one single line from a song in their own work – because a lot of things that are popular become a sort of cultural icon of a time and place.

The problem isn’t so much the idea of copyright but the duration, which keeps getting extended (seemingly at the behest of powerful movie studio lobbying).

Additionally, the idea that copyright is a one-size-fits-all concept. There is probably more value to “Super Trouper” than the Acorn Atom MOS because different things age differently.

Essentially, copyright is broken, but nobody has yet come up with something better so we’re stuck with it.

PS: Ironically open source exists because of copyright. As the rights holder, you grant the user a set of rights with a set of conditions to follow, and it’s the concept of copyright infringement that allows things like the GPL to be enforced (should you pick a licence that requires sources to continue to be kept open and available).

Gerard, I presume you have no locks on your doors and anyone can come and pick up anything they want – after all “ownership can be disputed”

I think you miss the point of “open source”. The authors of the work are choosing to gift their ownership to others. Where they do not choose to make that gift, they retain the right to keep.

As to where we would be without open source, the answer is “probably much the same place”

Edit: Ah, I see Rick had much the same thoughts, but types faster.

In the case of the logo, we’re not talking copyright so much as trademarks and “passing off”, are we? Someone using the ROOL cog colours on their site could be implying that their project/work/whatever has ROOL’s support; someone using a generic “RISC OS Cog” in un-claimed colours isn’t doing that.

I have developed a simulation of the London Underground but it used two items that were copyright so I had to keep if for my own use. One of the two was the Draw file image of the iconic LT Underground map originally produced as a Draw file by Jonathan Marten in 1990 from an original sprite map by Alex Hopkins and supplied with Draw+. The other was the LT roundel, which LT guard assiduously.

I have redrawn the Underground map as a geographic depiction and used the ubiquitous RISC OS green cog logo in place of the roundel to show that the programme had been developed with RISCOS. The original programme for RISC OS was developed between 1991 and 1994 and used the timetable for November 1989 to work out a method to visit each Underground station – then and now there are/were 270 stations – in the quickest possible time. I have now got to a time of 17 hrs 4 mins but it has taken me thirty years to do it, on and off, so I am nearly thirty years too late as the all day services to Ongar ceased in 1991 when they became rush hour only.

I converted the programme to work under Windows in 2010. For anyone who might be interested (!) there is a description of it here and an animated gif file of my virtual record attempt here

Improved version uploaded now that I have learnt how to render a dotted line in Windows using a vector graphic Draw file as the source data.