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

[Vernon Adams]

Yep.

I'll use Coda served from Adobe's Edge webfonts service as my example, from
https://edgewebfonts.adobe.com/fonts#/?nameFilter=coda&collection=coda

So from e.g. that page, i can obtain the Coda fonts by using the Developer tools of my web broswer. Not sure if this works for all browsers, but i'm using Chrome so it does…

The page's  Resources are exposed in the Developer tools and i can see the url of the Coda Regular font, it is;
data:font/opentype;base64,<i've cut the sqillions of lines of base64 encodingt>

That link kicks Chrome into downloading a single file called 'download' to my local machine.
I then add the file extension '.woff' to that file, to create 'download.woff'. It's a base64 encoded woff font file.

I can then use this font file, or… i guess i can use it?… can i share it? What should i call it? can i use it on my own server within a css @font-face rule?
I would like to print with it too… but it's a WOFF file, so more practical if i convert it… can i convert it into an opentype (OTF) file format? and print with it? Can i share that OTF? What can i call it?

I can understand why the situation is like this; Adobe only really want users of their service to use Coda as a 'webfont', they don't want to distribute it as e.g. an OTF font that can be used for printing, or as a TTF that can be used to build a @font-face kit. There is clearly NO WAY they are going to inform users to grab the font in the way i have, because then users will likely grab all the proprietary font in the same way. Remember the Adobe Typekit distribution system is designed to hinder and kerb the free distribution of proprietary font files. Libre fonts have just been slotted into the same system.

So… assuming as a user i have the resources and knowledge … i can use software to look at the metadata of the woff file. I'll use FontForge. Copyright is me :) RFN's are stated etc etc. But no mention of OFL, instead the license string is http://typekit.com/eulas/********  This takes me to the 'EULA' for Coda, and there is the OFL for Coda.

How could this situation be improved? Adobe could also allow the fonts to be downloaded as OTFs or TTFs. I doubt that will happen, and it's not my place to think it should.

As i've said in earlier posts, i think the solution lies more in the hands of font designers, to distribute font files that can carry enough standalone info to make them independent from other sources of usage & licensing info as possible. I should not rely on re-distributors to get all the font info in order, it should be in the font object itself. This would do 2 things; (1) Give enough information to make it clear that it's Free Software, (2) If that info is removed, then the remover has removed the most crucial flag to denoting the Free-ness of the font, which would be clearly naughty. 

-vernon

On 5 Jun 2013, at 12:38, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:

> On 5 June 2013 15:23, Vernon Adams <vern at newtypography.co.uk> wrote:
>> i feel that the file coming to users from Typekit etc could be a bit more 'informational'.
> 
> Can you be more concrete and specific?