Mark Boulton created the new Drupal wordmark as part of the Drupal.org redesign efforts. As highlighted by Jeff Traynor of Raincity Studios, the newly relaunched Drupal.com now uses this new wordmark as identification for Drupal and the wordmark is also destined to land on Drupal.org as part of the redesign (implementation unfortunately still underway).
So why not include the wordmark in shipping software as well? A logical step would be to have it on the installation and update (also known as maintenance screens). The patch for using the new Seven administration theme for installation and updates does just that. Because it is only a first approximation of how this should look, I'd love to get help cleaning it up and polishing things like lining up items, correct font sizes and fixing graphics - so we get a really polished experience for people's first Drupal encounter as well.
but ... wait! It's not GPL?!?
I thought there was some horrible terrible danger to the (R) aspect of the wordmark if it got released under the GPL? That was somehow the argument that was being used why we couldn't ever sell Druplicon+Wordmark items on store.drupal.org. Someone please clarify.
Licensing?
Won't the licensing of Drupal (the downloadable software) get messy if we start including images with a restricted copyright?
Impossible
Under no circumstances whatsoever can we include the new wordmark in Drupal itself.
One of the main design goals for the new wordmark was to have a new official logo and branding that was not under the GPL. See: http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/drupal-org-logo-trademark
Any artwork included in Drupal core must be released under the GPL.
Therefore, the new wordmark cannot be included in in core. Period.
We could potentially put other artwork there (maybe Druplicon?), but not artwork that's part of the drupal.org redesign.
--Larry Garfield
Drupal Association Director of Legal Affairs