06.19.07

Operating Systems Logo Guidelines

Posted in Thoughts at 12:03 pm by Jordi Fita

Recently I have seen some indie and free (as in free-speech) games’ pages that uses the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux logos to represent the platform the game can run on. Since I’m in the process of making the new web site for Amoebax I though I could use those logos to represent which platforms it can run on, but first I looked up the logos’ usage guidelines.

As I expected, I have no problem in using the Linux logo in my web page provided I credit the author. But in the case of Windows’ logo and Mac OS X Universal’s logo the situation is different, which is not a surprise.

If I understood correctly those guidelines, in the Mac OS X Universal logo program I need to send them a written and signed license agreement to Apple in order for them to approve or not the use of their universal logo in my “product’s”. This is not really a problem, but I would like to avoid it

Even worse is the Windows logo guidelines. All I could find is that if I want to use a Windows logo to identify this platform as a supported platform I need to enroll to a Microsoft Logo Program and then I could only use one of these logos (the “Works for Windows” logo in my case.) Worse still, to be able to apply for a “Works for Windows” logo I need a VeriSign Organizational Certificate which costs US$99 “thanks” to a partnership of Microsoft and VeriSign.

After seeing this I decided to scratch the idea of using operating systems logos in my web page and do like the Mozilla Foundation do on their home page: just put the name of the operating system.

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