[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Karl Berry]

    > be much better to have some sort of a PD-like license, and get everyone
    > to use that instead.

    Is there anything like this that exists? Or, is the OFL the closest?

The OFL is about as far from a "PD-like" license as a free license can
be, in my humble opinion.

There is really nothing like public domain.  It is unique, in that it
explicitly disavows copyright.  I thought the distinguishing
characteristic of public domain that made it interesting for OLIB was
that it could be relicensed, because of the disavowal.  Any other
license, however permissive the terms(*), will not have that feature.

However, there are few substantial fonts released in the public domain,
as far as I know.  Therefore I don't see that OLIB loses anything much
by restricting itself to OFL only; and the gain is that the incessant
legal quibbling over the freeness of "public domain", in this forum at
least, will cease :).

Best,
Karl

(*) The minimal free wording which Debian people have recommended to me is:

Copyright YYYY1, ..., YYYYN Copyright Holder.
You may freely use, modify and/or distribute this file.

In my view, that is clearly a simple "all-permissive" license which is
"compatible" with the OFL, GPL, and everything else.  However, no fonts
are released under it (as far as I know), so there seems no point in
accepting it for OLIB.