[Openfontlibrary] "The license for this font does not allow user modification"

[Dave Crossland]

Hi Gustavo!

On 11/07/07, Gustavo Ferreira <grilo at centroin.com.br> wrote:
>
> can you please elaborate why trying to have your rights respected is
> "pushing harder and harder in the wrong direction"?

Sure!

By "pushing harder and harder," I mean, not only saying in the EULA
you can't modify fonts, but also having technical protection measures
against modification.

By the "wrong direction," I mean, moving away from user-modification.
User modification is an essential right that we should have for all
software we use. And "Fonts are software, too." says
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/fonts.html :-)

> the type-design business depends on respect to the terms of font
> licenses. and as you all know, there is very little respect to those.

Most people have no respect for those licenses, because they deny
people basic and essential freedoms, and people intuit that they don't
deserve to be respected.

However, when you think about it, it is also not good to make an
agreement and break it, right? But its also wrong to not share with
friends or let someone have draconian power over you.

The ethical way out of this dilemma is to refuse to accept proprietary
software, and only use software you are free to use, share and
improve.

> what would be, in your opinion, the right direction?

Respecting users' freedom to use, share and improve their fonts, and
using ways of organising business to not trample users' freedom.

The more old school ATypI list members are also saying its a dumb idea, btw

> ps: i don't see how forwarding this message with an ironic comment is
> productive for OFL*...

Well no, not really productive, I just thought it was funny and might
be of interest to those here :-)

> * btw, WHAT IS THE OFL? cheers!

Unfortunately, there is an acronym collision for "open font license"
(which came first) and "open font library". Generally, "OFL" is the
license from SIL, and "OFLB" is the library. The OFLB will store most
OFL fonts, and only OFL fonts, so they (will) have a lot in common.

-- 
Regards,
Dave