[Openfontlibrary] more updates on Open Font Library

[rob at robmyers.org]

Quoting Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org>:

> I'm not sure...fonts are a very murky area which pushes me to think
> public domain is the way (like clip art).

I agree that Public Domain has worked very well for the Open Clip Art Library.
PD would make usage of the font completely unambiguous. The murkiness of the
copyright status of fonts varies around the world, so things are even more
confusing for an international project.

But I believe that copyright on font *programs* (Type 1 Postscript fonts or
TrueType bytecodes) is well established, and that the license on a font
shouldn't effect the document the font is used in. It might be useful to make
the font *programs* copyleft to protect the freedom to use them. This might
clash with users modifying fonts to include trademarked symbols (like fonts
with the Apple logo in for example), but the GPL should handle this as private
use of the program.

As software the fonts should be GPL or as a last resort have a specific font
software license. GPL-3 might allow any exceptions required for font 
usage. SVG
fonts should probably be BY-SA, as they are not progams (but then their
copyright status may be problematic, I don't know).

I personally would like BY-SA licensed fonts so I can extract the 
glyphs and use
them in art, but the copyright status of font designs is an issue for 
that again
.  Dual licensing is a pain so I don't think dual BY-SA/GPL would be a good
idea.

The project should not accept various licenses. Build a single commons rather
than a fragmented one. Let people mix fonts and borrow glyphs if they want or
need to without having to worry about which glyph is under which license.

> I don't know about the Free Art License, so am curious about this one as
> well.

The FAL is a nice license that predates CC. It is limited to fine art, has a
couple of ambiguities in it, and is not used very much. I don't think its use
should be promoted generally, and it is not particularly appropriate 
for fonts.

- Rob.