[Openfontlibrary] more updates on Open Font Library

[Raph Levien]

I'm going to add my voice to Dave's. The OFL makes sense for fonts.
GPL has definite shortcomings, as it was intended for code and not
fonts, andthere are ambiguities in trying to interpret rights for
stuff like embedding the font in documents and other "works." I
personally dislike CC licenses because they're not compatible with
free software releases such as Linux distros.

A profusion of licenses is a bad thing, because it discourages sharing
between fonts. For example, I'm very proud of the auxiliary characters
in my fonts, like the section mark and so on, and would be delighted
if other people just used those as long as the styles were compatible.

Copyright status of fonts is a very difficult minefield. Here's the
10,000 ft overview.

1. The _design_ of fonts is technically not copyrightable in the US.

2. In practice, the digital representation of fonts is copyrightable.
The ruling precedent is Judge Whyte's summary judgment in Adobe vs.
SSI.

3. There are other countries in which the designs can be copyrighted
as well. Thus, any international distribution of fonts must treat them
as such.

4. The _names_ of fonts are trademarkable. In the US, that is one of
the primary legal weapons. Before releasing a revival of an existing
font, it is important to check whether the name is trademarked by
anyone. I've heard that Microsoft spent about the same amount of money
verifying the trademark status of their new Vista fonts as on their
development.

5. If the original work (75 year old metal, for example), is
considered to be public domain, then the person creating a digital
revival has the right to choose the license. Commercial revivals of
old fonts are very common; an OFL release is just as easy to justify.
I have done so with my Century Catalogue, and will probably do so with
others.

The issue was discussed in some detail on typophile:

http://typophile.com/node/9296

Hope this helps. In sum, I highly recommend OFL, feel that PD makes
sense, and would not recommend any other license, at least until I
heard a compelling argument in its favor.

Raph

On 23 Oct 2006 11:52:43 -0700, George Williams <gww at silcom.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 04:54, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > Here's something curious: In the USA typefaces are not copyrightable,
> > because some old dead dudes said the alphabet was de facto public, and
> > outside the scope of copyright.
> "The" alphabet was public? The world has expanded so we now have several
> alphabets to choose... Are all alphabets public do you think, or only
> the latin one?
>
> Does anyone have a reference to the exact quote? I couldn't figure out
> how to refine the search sufficiently for google to be useful.
>
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