[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Dave Crossland]

On 02/11/06, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
>     2. I think promoting copyleft fonts is important
>
> Regardless of the legal quandaries of public domain, I certainly agree
> that copyleft is preferable to public domain (or non-copyleft free, for
> that matter), and that the OFLicense seems the only viable choice in
> that regard.
>
> What fonts in the public domain exist, anyway?  I'm not aware of any.

This is, as you say, contentious :-)

There are fonts floating around the Internet that are dedicated to the
public domain, and http://tulrich.com/fonts/ has good search engine
ranking for

"public domain" fonts

and is a good example of this. As I've posted, I feel these fonts need
to be relicensed because dedicating works to the public domain isn't
legally possible, IMHO IANAL ETC.

Given that and since it is impossible for any digital fonts to have
expired copyright terms, there are no public domain fonts.

I've mentioned a quirk in USA copyright law before - which is not
shared where I am, in the UK - where typeface designs are not
copyrightable because the alphabet was considered inalienably public
domain when the legislation was drafted all those years ago. This used
to be a problem/boon for established/new type foundries, until a court
ruled that with digital manifestations of typeface designs - fonts -
were subject to copyright. So if you redraw the digital outlines of a
typeface design from scratch, in the USA, you are legally cool -
though bound to be unpopular with established type foundries, hoho.

There's another potentially interesting quirk in USA copyright law,
where the works created by the USA Government are also considered
inalienably public domain. Therefore, there is a theoretical
possibility that a font authored created by the state, say one used
for public road signs, would be public domain. Public-Private
partnership means this is not the case, alas. [0]

[0]: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/10/new_roadsign_font_no.html

> I am getting the idea that the consensus is that OFLibrary is about
> collecting OFLicensed (and hence new) fonts, rather than collecting
> existing free fonts.  Correct/incorrect?  (I have no strong feelings
> about this choice myself, but I'd like to understand. :)

I think collecting new OFLicensed fonts is the best way forward.

Jon, what do you think?

I still haven't fully digested the thread "Font File Type and Admins?"
that flows from Raph's post on Oct 28 2006 23:06:47 PDT [1] and
especially your posts, Karl, but I think the two main benefits are
creating a Free Font Commons, and helping to raise the bar on Free
Font quality.

That is, I think requiring the OFL adds a speedbump to raising quality
and helps prevent unwanted non-free additions to the library.

Like Raph, I wouldn't want to mix in my fonts with a load of crap.
However, we want a rich and diverse collection in the library. I think
this can be done with a ratings system, which is already part of
ccHost. Design of the front page to 'feature' top rated fonts is one
simple way of doing this.

[1]: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/openfontlibrary/2006-October/000137.html

-- 
Regards,
Dave