[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Treatment of the OFL in the wild

[Victor Gaultney]

On 5 Jun 2013, at 17:59, vernon adams <vern at newtypography.co.uk> wrote:

> from the OFL definition, the uses of OFL fonts by Adobe, Monotype, etc IS 'embedding'...

Uh - not at all. "…we mean inclusion of the font in a document or file…" The web fonts paper, again, talks all about this. :-)

> And then, all those fonts lying in web browser caches? are they distributions? No? Yes?…

It is possible to come up with many on-the-edge cases, which seem to strain the OFL and OFL-FAQ. In many cases these are not practically relevant but make for interesting discussions :-) Other times the on-the-edge cases are really important, and deserve lots of thought. Web fonts are one of those, and that's my we created a whole separate doc to document the issues there and express how we thought the OFL fit into that world. Web browser caches as a distribution model seems a bit out there.

> As a designer (who wants their fonts to be as free as possible) i see that the present situation needs some positive patching. I ideally want the freedom of my fonts protected under a license, where the license is as clear, simple and effective as possible, whichever way that font has been used.

That's great - however the way you're defining 'as free as possible' makes for a really problematic situation.  IOW - you want anyone who has any copy of your font to be able to do anything with your font, including changing every glyph, potentially causing it to be unrecognisable as the original, yet still have the font name?

That's a noble thing, but doesn't help the user community.Users need to know that whatever method they get font 'XXX' - they will get something that reasonably resembles 'XXX'. If a web fonts service offers me Lobster, I don't want to get Crayfish.

BTW - you can already release fonts that provide this freedom - just don't declare RFNs.

As far as I know, the OFL is still the best model for free font licensing, and does not hinder freedom.

>  I see the definition of 'embedding' versus 'distribution' as not helpful. To me technology has clearly made embedding a distribution. I would like to think of the best way that my fonts can come out of any embedding process with it's licensing info and permissions clear, simple and intact, with no need to track down text files 'back at base' etc.  What might be the best way to do that? 

Decide that your font will never be used in a PDF file. If you really want to define font distribution as any time font data is sent from point A to point B, and require that full license info be sent with it, then you'll have to talk to Adobe about a new version os PDF. There has to be a line drawn somewhere between distribution and embedding.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I would *love* to be able to open up a PDF file with any PDF reader and easily be able to click to get the canonical versions of any fonts used, and find out about improved derivatives. But this has little to do with any particular licensing model, and would be possible with the OFL if Adobe and all the PDF creators and readers out there would allow it.

So I feel that creating a better world for designers and users is a matter of including license info, making that info available, and linking to canonical sources. The OFL fully supports this.

V.
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