[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Dave Crossland]

On 14/11/06, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
>
> I still think we should do both Public Domain and OFL license.

Please explain what you think PD - or an all-permissive non-copyleft
free software license with the same qualities but safe international
implementation - has going for it that trumps the problems raised on
list :-)

I'm aware that its worked well for Open Clip Art Library, but I don't
think this trumps the problems raised. Clip art is very different to
fonts, in terms of the cultures around them.*

> I'm asking CC ppl. about this today...

Wow, awesome! I look forward to hearing about this :-)

> On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 19:32 +0100, Jan Claeys wrote:
> > So, IMHO, it would
> > 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?

"Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it
might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software
license.

"Modified BSD license ... If you want a simple, permissive
non-copyleft free software license, the modified BSD license is a
reasonable choice.

"FreeBSD license ... If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft
free software license, the FreeBSD license is a reasonable choice."

 - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

However, I think that a pure OFL OFLB is the best thing:

0. A single licensing option implies clarity of vision for the
project; leadership.

1. While this discussion has been going on, Ed Trager has released his
'Go for OFL!' campaign - http://www.unifont.org/go_for_ofl/ - which we
would do well to support, especially because of...

2. ...the coincidental namespace - Open Font Li* - is a bonus - people
will remember one from the other, if their link is emphasised (a good
memetic trait, worth exploiting)

3. OFL is designed to be attractive for designers and free software
advocates; PD and even GPL are notoriously unattractive for designers.

4. Since currently the only OFL fonts are high quality, requiring OFL
will set a bar of typographic quality (* this idea of 'quality' is a
good example of how fonts are different to clip art, and how the
typophile culture is worlds apart from the free software culture)

5. Other websites already list Free Fonts under a variety of licenses

6. The Free Font Movement lacks a center for a development community.
The OFLB can become that center! But it needs...

7.  ...License Solidarity. License proliferation retards development,
and the wider Free Software movement is heading for more license
solidariry with GPLv3 and Sun's recent *substantial* GPLv2
contributions.

Raph has posted several times on why he thinks OFL is good and I might
have missed some of his points off from this list.

-- 
Regards,
Dave