[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Jon Phillips]

On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 01:12 +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> On 14/11/06, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
> >
> > 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'm glad that's been clarified.
> 
> > I think I might be in favor now of a pure Open Font Licensed OFL.o
> 
> Awesome!
> 
> > 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.
> 
> I think PD is equal to a all-permissive non-copyleft license...
> 
> > Rob, and any others do you have any good ideas for how
> > to offer something like Public Domain for fonts, other content, etc?
> 
> ...and the "Modified BSD license" and "FreeBSD License" appear to be
> commonly grouped as "Revised BSD licenses". These are recommended for
> this kind of purpose at
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Yeah, not in favor of using software/source code licenses for
fonts/content. It is another fuzzy legal area.

> > Crap, I wonder where this new enlightenment leaves the Open Clip Art
> > Library....man...
> 
> Well, nono, I think OCAL is A-OK: the contributors, audience and
> culture is totally different and non-copyleft makes sense for clipart;
> only OFL makes sense for fonts though. IMO :-)
> 
> Does PD allow you to relicense? If so, I imagine that relicensing
> under an all-permissive non-copyleft license would be quite
> uncontroversion, especially when presented as a reaffirmation of the
> international intention of the project.

Public Domain allows one to do anything with the PD declared content,
including re-licensing.

Jon

-- 
Jon Phillips

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