[Openfontlibrary] Public Domain?

[Dave Crossland]

On 14/11/06, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
>
> Ok, so I talked with CC's general counsel about this and what Rob points
> out is true. Basically, public domain support outside the USA is dubious
> and the CC PD declaration doesn't support this nor do the ones crafted
> in the open source community really solve this (if not make it legally
> murkier and more armchair).

I'm glad that's been clarified.

> I think I might be in favor now of a pure Open Font Licensed OFL.o

Awesome!

> And, I must say, without our previous discussions we would have
> never have gotten to this point.

:-)

> My only other thought is that we might be able to do something like make
> a FREE font declaration stating that anyone can do anything with our
> fonts, etc...but I don't think it has any bite without the Public Domain
> dedication and how that is understood.

I think PD is equal to a all-permissive non-copyleft license...

> Rob, and any others do you have any good ideas for how
> to offer something like Public Domain for fonts, other content, etc?

...and the "Modified BSD license" and "FreeBSD License" appear to be
commonly grouped as "Revised BSD licenses". These are recommended for
this kind of purpose at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

> Crap, I wonder where this new enlightenment leaves the Open Clip Art
> Library....man...

Well, nono, I think OCAL is A-OK: the contributors, audience and
culture is totally different and non-copyleft makes sense for clipart;
only OFL makes sense for fonts though. IMO :-)

Does PD allow you to relicense? If so, I imagine that relicensing
under an all-permissive non-copyleft license would be quite
uncontroversion, especially when presented as a reaffirmation of the
international intention of the project.

-- 
Regards,
Dave