[OpenFontLibrary] licence

[Robert Martinez]

Ben Weiner wrote:
> Hi
>
> Robert Martinez wrote:
>> i'm about to explore the wiki and sometimes i find some glitches like:
>>
>> http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Other_licenses <- states only OFL & 
>> public domain are allowed
>> http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/License <- states "...All the font 
>> files you can download from this site are licensed as free software 
>> <http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Other_licenses>, often under the OFL 
>> & public domain...", wich means it is not only OFL & pd
>>
>> things are getting pretty confusing here imho.
>>
> Would this be solved if the word "often" was removed from
> "All the font files you can download from this site are licensed as 
> free software, often under the Open Font License (OFL) or as 
> contributions to the public domain."
>
> ?
>> We should briefly show what freedoms/restrictions we guarantee for.
>>
>> If too much confusion will be the result I would probably vote for 
>> sticking to some simple rules  even if it means to loose some fonts 
>> in the library.
> Well, license issues will always be a high-profile part of free and 
> open source software. The archives of this list are proof of that :-)
>
> If we only host OFL and PD we will lose some quite important typeface 
> projects, and this is a current concern.
>
> Ben
>
I don't know if just removing "often" is enough. Then you say everything 
here is "free software". but there is also public domain stuff, and the 
complexety of mixing the "free software" definition with a clean 
statement what we offer on OFLB is a confusion imho.

The GPL had to write an exception just for the font case - we ONLY deal 
with fonts and therefore should not use the "free software" or "GPL"  
and describe the difference along, just to explain what exactly we offer.

I would like to see a clean list that says it all - like Dave 
said:"ofl+cc0+gplv3later+fe" (what is fe?). and then maybe  add some 
text that explains how & why the list was formed the (strong idea about 
the freedom aspect just like the GNU project ect.)

Concerning the loss of certain fonts i think i'm a hardliner here too.
In this font jungle out there it is really wild. we should not adapt to 
the diversity, but focus on building a solid set of requirements. it 
should be a goal for font designers to make it work with libraries like 
ours - not the other way round.

if we fail to bring more order to this licence chaos we miss a great 
opportunity to help lots of creative people in their day to day work.