[Openfontlibrary] name

[Ellen Lupton]

How about OFLB for Open Font Library?

The O in OFLO doesn't make much sense to me.

el

> Hi Karl!
> 
> (I hope Ellen and Jon and Victor or Nicolas can reply to this :-)
> 
> On 30/10/06, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
>> Um, so as far as I can tell, this whole project is about "free" fonts.
>> So why not change the name to Free Font Library to avoid the dual
>> meaning of "OFL"?  It will be a constant confusion.
> 
> I believe both projects have reasons for their names.
> 
> I doubt either will change.
> 
> I think promoting dont-use-acronyms won't work.
> 
> I think the way Open Office is acronymed to OOo or OO.o maybe works:
> 
> Open Font License = OFL
> 
> Open Font Library = OFLO or OFLo or OFL.o
> 
> Or maybe it sucks :-)
> 
> But I think promoting context sensitivity and awareness of both
> projects can help.
> 
>> (Or Freely Available Font Library.  Or something.)
> 
> IMHO "Freely Available" sounds like "free beer".
> 
> My *personal understanding* of the two projects reasons for their
> names, and hope Jon and Victor or Nicolas can corroborate this:
> 
> Jon Phillips has set up OpenFontLibrary.org as a sister project of
> OpenClipartLibrary.org
> 
> SIL has tried to evade preconceptions of the term "free fonts" in the
> proprietary font community with the name "Open Font License".
> 
> Bear with me while I spout off on this:
> 
> There the term 'free fonts' is memetically contaminated; there is a
> general perception in the public that ALL fonts are zero price, after
> decades of applications bundling fonts and "10,000 Fonts for ONLY $3
> so BUY NOW!!!1!!" CD-ROMs at the local market. This is revealed in
> your use of quote marks around the word free, and it a big concern of
> proprietary font developers.
> 
> My local type history museum - www.stbride.org - has propaganda
> posters on the walls against such unlicensed file sharing, and its is
> also present in the reactions to Ellen Lupton's presentation at ATypI
> last month - www.designwritingresearch.org/free_fonts.html
> 
> Now personally I have affinity for the term 'Free Software' after my
> experiences explaining stuff like firefox and wikipedia to the kind of
> people who don't check their email every day.
> 
> I've found that the term 'open source' is flawed for this because it
> is too much about technical stuff - I often get sidetracked explaining
> what "source" is - and its jargon nature is reflected in the
> surrounding philosophy of 'development methodology'.
> 
> Whereas the term 'Free Software' is initially confused by people. By
> default as in 'free as in no money' but that's actually leverage to
> communicate the philosophy of 'free as in freedom', or as I say it,
> "free as in I have a free house tonight".
> 
> I include explaining that most Free Software is available without
> spending money, but that is just because its honest about the Internet
> [1] and there is some which you have to pay to get, and plenty of
> non-free software you don't have to pay for.
> 
> And no one is confused any more, which I test by asking for an
> intuitive grasp of what wikipedia is about and why it works.
> 
> But I recognise that not everyone sees things the same way as I do,
> and perhaps to a proprietary font developer the name "Open Font
> License" creates less recoil than "Free Font License".
> 
> Plus a lot of awareness-promotion has been done for the OFL, which I
> consider the main (though less interesting ;-) reason for it not
> changing.
> 
> Turning to OFLO, this is just a personal observation of mine, but I've
> noticed that generally the Inkscape and Creative Commons communities
> tend to use the phrase 'open source' more often than 'free software'.
> 
> While the OFLO hasn't become as established as OFL has, I doubt rejon
> is up for changing it. And cross-promotion from the OCAL will be very
> cool, and is smoother within a "Open * Library" umbrella brand name.
> 
> So until recently, the term 'free' was pretty absent in the emerging
> community subscribed to this list. Why is it now cropping up?
> 
> Ellen Lupton coined the term 'free font movement' for her ATypI
> presentation, and this is where I saw it first.
> 
> I suspect its ported from the term 'free software movement', which has
> FSF momentum behind it, but the body of Ellen's presentation had a
> general tendency towards the term 'open source', and slight blurring
> of the 'free as in freedom' and 'free as in beer' concepts.
> 
> But Ellen putting "Free Font Movement" out in front of ATypI is a
> pretty big deal.
> 
> I generally like the leverage I can get out of throwing the term free
> out there as soon as possible. And I think that this is especially
> important for fonts, since there a bucket loads of freeware fonts, so
> the free-as-in-freedom thing needs extra attention.
> 
> I also think that 'Open Font' is maybe slightly memetically
> contaminated by 'OpenType', though this is minor.
> 
> [1]: There's a nice half hour lecture about being honest about the
> Internet at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426887663831686611
> :-)