[Microbit-Python] Making this list public

[Michael]

To put that into context, I don't like quoting private email, but some
relevant fragments from one of the original team members:

     I managed to locate all the documents on the book, as well as
     the drafts of the hardware and software specs of the computer.
     Also drafts of the programmes themselves. However I do have,
     somewhere, a file with some of the minutes of the meetings, not
     just the correspondence. The stuff I looked at so far does not even
     mention the owl.
     ...
     PS I do seem to remember that the owl was the logo of BBC Education
     originally....not sure if that was before or after the Computer
programme
     though.

Interesting huh? My impression is that what probably happened is someone
said "we need a logo", and someone designed one and they just went "thanks"
and moved on. Of course for those of us who grew up in the 80s it's one of
*those* logos :-)

As a result, it's things like this that make me think that archives are a
good thing :-)


Michael.
[:]





On 22 October 2015 at 12:22, Michael <sparks.m at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 22 October 2015 at 11:41, Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll at ntoll.org> wrote:
>
>> OK... I'll leave things until the weekend when I'll make the list public
>> (which is what people appear to want given the replies so far) unless
>> there are strong objections.
>>
>> Just managing expectations of timeline and outcome.
>>
>> BTW, I'd love to know who designed the owl logo. Can this be put into
>> the public domain or something "re-usable"..?
>>
>
> That was the reason I was trying to hunt down the creator FWIW.
>
> The tl;dr version of below is "arrrrrrgggghhhh. dunno? and because of that
> 'not as far as we know'" :-/
>
> The impression that I've got from various people is that the Owl was
> design by a full time member of staff who was a designer. (Having chatted
> to several members of the original team, but confirmation is tricky) If
> that was the case, it would be relatively simple (in BBC terms...) to get
> that resolved. That said, it's unknown and not that simple.
>
> In a similar way to the fact that any code I write at work is owned by the
> BBC and I have no rights over (such as the reference/prototype micro:bit
> implementation), that would mean that the original designer wouldn't own
> the rights - since the BBC would own the full rights. As a result that
> would explain why it's tricky to identify the originator.
>
> A bit tangentially, but worth explaining:
>
> Managing rights at the BBC is an astonishingly complicated thing
> incidentally. I was once working on a project which required time sync'd
> metadata as a source, and I ended up using one of the rights databases. The
> rights for something like the doctor who proms meant that someone would sit
> with a stop watch, pause button, etc, and watch the final cut. And pretty
> much much every 2-3 seconds have to note what thing which may have a rights
> implication (prop, clip from the show, bit of music, star coming on screen,
> going off screen, etc) would come up. Similarly things like soaps can be
> problematic due to full screen copies of posters on walls and so on.
>
> Printed out, such a document of single line entries, the Doctor Who prom
> would result in a 80-100 page document. By contrast, something like a 3-4
> hour programme on the winter olympics would have a handful of pages -
> because the people with "rights" in the show would be very few. If you
> think combining licenses for works based on GPL, Apache and MPL can be
> tricky, they're MUCH simpler by comparison :-)
>
> This focus on recording things correctly, and getting things resolved
> early has improved an awful lot since the 70's & 80's, but sometimes there
> can be odd examples that catch out. For example the CD release (in the late
> 90's I think?) of the original Hitch Hiker's radio serial was *allegedly*
> delayed because they couldn't find the sound mixer who did the original
> incidental audio mix.
>
> Since they couldn't find them, and that the person was a contractor (who
> would've been paid for all rights to the radio, tape and vinyl mixes...)
> they couldn't rely on just being able to use the same mix - so the audio
> needed to be remixed. Now, how true this is, I don't know - sometimes BBC
> stories you hear are true or based on truth - I suspect this one is either
> true or close to what actually happened - either with hitch-hikers or
> similar.
>
> The problem here with the Owl arises,and becomes unclear though, because a
> lot of designers were also not full time staff members, and whether things
> like designs were actually owned outright by the BBC can be unclear.  Hence
> the estate of Terry Nation owning the rights to the Daleks, Bob Baker
> owning K9. (K9 is uncomfortably close in timeline of invention to the owl -
> which is why I mention it)
>
> Anyway, the impression I think everyone has is that based on everyone I've
> spoken to, people *think* that the Owl logo is owned by the BBC, but no-one
> is really sure, and that uncertainty is one of the reasons (I think) that
> it's not used any more, except buried halfway down the page on the BBC
> internet blog. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet)
>
> Given all that, I think it might be clear why some people are more willing
> to give it a go than others, but you can't give out a license on something
> you don't own. If you do give out a license on something you don't own,
> it's an offence (and a much more serious one than just making copies
> yourself because you think you own the rights). If you're not sure, what do
> you do?
>
>
> Michael.
>
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