It looks like a smart move to me. O'Reilly seems genuinely concerned about the community, has made a logo available for free download, and has made another logo available for free if you jump through the hoops.

It is treading a fine line and they seem to realize this. Any restrictions are going to upset some people. If the rules of copyright weren't so clear on this, I think O'Reilly might have decided to avoid the issue.

They have certainly done this in a much better way than I've seen most companies deal with copyright issues involving the non-commercial use by fans on the net.

Part of me is sad to see "the lawyers" influence here. But I also tend to associate the camel more with the books than with the language.

I wholeheartedly reject the all-too-common and simplistic argument that "they can do whatever they want because they own it". But O'Reilly appears to have done this carefully. I'd like to see them provide a wider variety of graphics (sizes, colors) to better serve the community. Perhaps this will happen as this policy matures.

Tim O'Reilly is very good about details like this. He has done far more for Perl than most people realize, including giving Larry Wall free reign and investing in ActiveState to help the reunification of Windows and Unix versions of Perl.

I have no problems with the fact that he and his company would like to protect a trademark they established which helps him sell books (and therefore helps him recoup substantial time, energy and money invested in building the community).

O'Reilly has the right to protect something they've made popular, and it's good for the community, since we have a symbol of "real{tm} Perl".

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Thanks for replying, merlyn.   You've clearly articulated my own thoughts.   My question was intended to be open-ended, that someone might mention implications that hadn't occurred to me.
    cheers,
    ybiC

Seems to me that this is all a good deal less restrictive than many of us assumed that ORA were about the usage of the Camel.

And if I read between the lines correctly, a lot of this is down to the work that Jon Orwant has done since joining the company.

Still, I wonder where it leaves pages like this: http://london.pm.org/camel.html :)

Quick! Someone find Joe and shove him in a broom closet! :)