[Openfontlibrary] Some suggestions

[Simos Xenitellis]

Dear All,
It's a bit late here, so apologies for the bullet point layout :(.

1. It is important for the Open Font project to include fonts that are 
covered with a Free (as in Freedom) license, or at least distinguish 
between free and freeware.
2. It is not good to distribute fonts individually as TTF files but as 
an archive (such as ZIP, 7Z, TGZ), because they should include some license.
3. Public domain fonts do not provide freedom (a la FSF), they are bad :)
4. The GPL is not an appropriate license for fonts, see
http://fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException
5. A new license is being drafted, the Open Font License, by SIL 
(www.sil.org). FSF will be pitching on this license, see
http://openlists.sil.org/archives/ofl-discuss/2005-November/000025.html
If all goes ok, we will have a proper brand new free license for fonts. 
If someone has a font they want to make free, they can simply add the 
Open Font License in the package and there they go.
6. The Open Font License is available at
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
There is a discussion mailing list at
http://openlists.sil.org/mailman/listinfo/ofl-discuss
There is lots of material to read here.
7. The Open Font License uses the initials OFL, which clashes with the 
Open Font Library.
It might look a bit marketing-y on my side, I would feel that it would 
be better to change Library to something like Repository, as in
Open Font Repository (OFR).
This would mean a few more bucks to register the new domain name and 
some administration work. Would this be ok with you? Please?
8. SIL (www.sil.org) will be publishing high quality fonts as OFL soon. 
Actually, Gentium (http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium) is already available!
9. If a font is Free (as in Freedom), you can easily use a program 
script to convert to SVG or embedd in a document and do so many things.

It is an important initiative to make a public collection of Free fonts.

All the best,
Simos Xenitellis
http://simos.info/blog/