[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Jon Phillips]

On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 16:11 -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
>     > 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 :).

Ok, I almost missed your "smiley" at the end of that sentence...


Ok, so I talked with CC's general counsel about this and what Rob points
out is true. Basically, public domain support outside the USA is dubious
and the CC PD declaration doesn't support this nor do the ones crafted
in the open source community really solve this (if not make it legally
murkier and more armchair).

I think I might be in favor now of a pure Open Font Licensed OFL.o. And,
I must say, without our previous discussions we would have never have
gotten to this point.

My only other thought is that we might be able to do something like make
a FREE font declaration stating that anyone can do anything with our
fonts, etc...but I don't think it has any bite without the Public Domain
dedication and how that is understood.

Crap, I wonder where this new enlightenment leaves the Open Clip Art
Library....man...Rob, and any others do you have any good ideas for how
to offer something like Public Domain for fonts, other content, etc?

Thanks!

Jon


> 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.
> 
> 
-- 
Jon Phillips

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