[Openfontlibrary] Re: Open Font Library

[Jon Phillips]

On Mon, 2006-03-20 at 17:20 -0600, rejon.org feedback form wrote:
> Name: Monica Tohver
> E-mail: mtohver at puddlespublishing.com
> 
> 
> I started Puddles Publishing Inc. just last year, knowing that the
> cost of font licences would go through the roof. I have invested a
> lot of personal hours inventing fonts for products. Since I have used
> a few very rare "free for commercial use" fonts, I am looking to
> polish my own up and put them up under a "free for commercial use
> licence," restricting the use to small businesses and preventing the
> large corporations from that advantage. I'm not sure I want them free
> for the general public (yet) -- a chance to let the young publishing
> houses use them before they are overused. Do you know of such a
> licence in CC or GNU? As for some other of my fonts, I will want to
> put them up for the public -- on my site and on your Open Font
> Library project site. A "free for educational use" licence might be
> interesting, as would a "free for disabled use" (though I don't know
> how to word that to be politically correct anymore, though I have two
> disabled children).

Yes, font licensing is a very complicated matter. I would encourage you
to look at the Open Font License: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL

For Open Font Library, we are looking to provide this license as well as
public domain for people to use. I think that providing the type of
language you propose is dangerous because of its vagueness, and a
license is a better approach.

> I would also like to help your OFL project as I am doing with your
> sister site, Open Clip Art Library:  I have a "free for commercial
> use" credits page on the Puddles Publishing site and I have taken the
> liberty to create a suitable linking button for OCAL. Feel free to
> contact any font designers you find there to contribute to your OFL
> site to get a good font base going. I haven't got all my font sources
> up on that page yet, but I will add to them over the next month or so.
>  Check out the page at http://puddlespublishing.com/credits.html.

Great! It would be great to get your contributions to the Open Font
Library!

> Just a small suggestion (request?) for your OFL site... check out
> http://www.openphoto.net/licenses.html and try to tell me that a
> search by licence tool or table like these guys have wouldn't be
> handy for your readers! If one searches Google for "public domain
> fonts" or "free for commercial use" fonts, one can see there are
> people screaming for legible and free fonts devoid of legal hassles.
> I've only had my credits page up for a few days (I made sure I had
> good metatag keywords) and I'm getting a significant increase in
> traffic already.

I think this is a great suggestion, and I'm cc'ing the Open Font Library
list to discuss this suggestion.

> I have a fairly dichotomous view toward font copyright and patent. 
> On the one hand, the artist in me wants credit and some reasonable
> recompense for my work so that I can afford to live... so I
> sympathize with American font designers with respect to US law that
> does not allow them to claim artistic copyright. Also, what of the
> designers of pre-internet times who suffer their work to be scanned
> in to a ttf and made profitable by others as a piece of software? On
> the other hand, I don't want to sit on my laurels and suck coffers
> dry for work based on the collective conscious symbol work of my
> species. There's just something rude about the Goudy family wanting
> to continue receiving money for the work of a long dead ancestor that
> rankles me from a publisher point of view (I live in Canada where font
> copyright thrives and publishers are at the mercy of font licencing
> fees). Sooner or later, all the possible fonts for our A-Z alphabet
> will be invented -- and gobbled up by the greedy.  With so many
> people designing and so many restrictions as to what makes a font
> legible, and given that a new font should be no more than 50% like
> any other or it risks infringement... Where will the common person be
> with no licence to type anything in an increasingly predatorial
> corporate world?  Let us set some decent ones aside for their
> perpetual use so that there will be the right to write!
> 
> Monica Tohver, President
> mtohver at puddlespublishing.com
> Puddles Publishing, Inc.
> http://puddlespublishing.com/

Monica, I completely agree! Please join the Open Font Library project
and help make it stellar!

Jon

-- 
Jon Phillips

San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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