[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Ed Trager]

On 11/2/06, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
> On 02/11/06, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think collecting new OFLicensed fonts is the best way forward.
>
> I've just spent a few hours gardening the wiki, and while tending to
> the http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Existing_Free_Fonts page
> I rethought that strong statement :-)

BTW, The link on that page to my Font Guide is out-of-date:
"http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontguide/" is stale.
"http://unifont.org/fontguide" is the new link for almost a year now.

>
> If the OFLB itself is exclusively for OFL fonts (as I suggested),
> perhaps the [http://directory.gnu.org GNU Project Free Software
> Directory] is a good place to list *ALL* the Free Fonts that float
> around on the web, no matter what the license (as long as its free
> software). That is the goal of the FSD, for all Free Software,
> afterall.
>

No, don't try to list all free fonts on either OFLB or any sister
site.  There's too much junk and ambiguous licensing issues to try to
sort out.  Liam R E Quin has the right answer:

> I'd rather see that the original font designer have to submit fonts.

With author-only submissions you are much more likely to get people
who are intent on delivering high-quality fonts.  And those people are
going to read the OFL licensing terms before submitting too.

> However, just linking to them may be a problem though as their current
> homes on the web may disappear in the future. Websites tend to churn a
> lot and this is *very* likely.

Other sites --such as my own http://unifont.org/fontguide as just one
example but there are plenty of other sites with somewhat different
font foci-- do just that.  It's true that just linking to others does
lead to stale links here and there over time.  That is a site
maintenance issue that comes with the territory.  In general though
the larger, more popular, and better administered sites tend to
realize over time that changing there URLs frequently is a bad
practice, so with high quality fonts coming out of high-quality
projects there tends to be long-term stability in the URLs too.

> (I do like the idea of a 'ffl' ligature logo :-)

That could be quite good.

>
> I'm aware that by suggesting this, I might be annoyingly suggesting a
> fork, but am sincere about a *sister* project.
>

Does not http://unifont.org/fontguide/ in some sense already represent
an already extant project that links to high-quality free fonts?

Of course unifont.org/fontguide/ has shortcomings:  For example, one
can legitimately argue that a more extensive catalogue and better
categorization of Latin and other Western free fonts should be
included.  Also the fontguide uses a traditional web site model.  It
is not a wiki nor does the site employ any similar collaborative model
other than the "if you send me email, then I respond to it" kind of
model.

Best - Ed