We are planning on posting very liberal rules for using a set of Swift logos on Swift.org in the future. In the meantime, if you have a specific use in mind and you’re wondering if it fits within our guidelines, you can send the specifics to permission@apple.com to confirm whether it does.
Thanks,
Allen
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The even better answer, though, is found here: Swift - Resources - Apple Developer. At the bottom, you'll see that there is downloadable assets and guidelines for using the logo. As long as you follow those guidelines, you don't need to ask for permission.
The Swift logo can be used by educators and publishers in course materials and technical publications related to teaching, training, or describing the Swift programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Developers who are members of the Apple Developer Program can use the Swift logo in promotional or technical materials that promote the use of the Swift programming language in their apps.
I'm assuming the omission of other platforms is an oversight. But this doesn't even include people releasing libraries or other open source projects.
The minimum height for the logo is 10 mm for printed materials and 30 pixels for onscreen use. The minimum clear space around the logo should be X on all sides, where X is equal to one-quarter the height of the logo.
So no file-type icons or anything like that.
Do not alter the logo artwork in any way.
We're not even allowed to use the bird on it's own if the rounded rect doesn't fit the design.
Do not incorporate the Swift logo or any part of the logo in your institution, program, course, or company identity.
So something like a Swift meetup or user group could not incorporate a variation of the logo into their own.
All in all, these restrictions really don't sound like they fit the spirit of an open-source project. In comparison, both Ruby and Rust have their logos licensed under some form of Creative Commons license. Rust and Python both have licensing terms that are much less restrictive and seem to mostly aim to prevent uses that wrongly imply official support from the projects, but not alterations and non-confusing uses for non-commercial (and some commercial) purposes.
Having a stricter than necessary, but simpler, policy allows the simpler policy to be published. This benefits everyone, even if you are outside that policy, because you only had to read and understand a simple policy. Providing an email where you can ask provides Apple with the ability to relax that policy on a case by case basis. Imagine the alternative of a massive use policy covering all sorts of corner cases, everyone would have to plough through masses of legalise :( every time.
Well, we already know that other languages (python, rust, etc) have less restrictive licenses and they seem to be doing fine, so it’s not like it would result in an intractable mess of a document. having to ask for exceptions from Apple doesn’t really compensate, I personally wouldn’t bother asking as I would probably expect the answer to be “no”
Completely agree, if the guidelines explicitly say “Do not alter the logo artwork in any way” the last thing I’d think would be to ask anyway because maybe they just wrote that for no reason at all.
I also don’t think “all logo use guidelines by Apple always follow this format” is really an argument, since, at least to me, Swift is more like it's own project with Apple filling the role of a custodian (is that the word I'm looking for?) until it's big enough to live on it's own.
I think the Rust legal stuff page does a pretty good job, calling out the implicit subjectiveness of these trademark matters, giving some examples of what definitely can and can't be done and asking ppl to contact if their use is not described.
