[Openfontlibrary] Non-Copyleft Openfontlibrary

[Jon Phillips]

On Tue, 2008-11-04 at 20:16 -0500, Fontfreedom at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 11/4/2008 4:07:09 AM Pacific Standard Time,  cfynn at gmx.net 
> writes:
> >However I don't want to see any version of that  font being sold for 
> >profit or falling under a commercial or proprietary  license - or someone 
> >making minor modifications and copyrighting them.  That would just be 
> >allowing someone else to cynically take financial  advantage of all my 
> >hard work without doing much of anything themselves  or it could mean 
> >that I couldn't make some improvement in my own font  because someone 
> >might claim the improvement was already  copyright.
> >
> >
> >I'm would be foolish to donate land for a  public park without ensuring 
> >that and noone could come along, erect a  small fence and claim it as 
> >their own personal or commercial  property.
> >
> >Releasing a font under GPL or OFL license simply  ensures the font can 
> >freely be used or modified by anyone and that no  one can claim 
> >proprietary or commercial rights.
> >
> >If  somebody does want a similar font to sell under a commercial license 
> >I'm  perfectly willing to develop one for them for a fair price.
> My vision is more  along the lines of:
> 
> Someone takes a basic, high quality font with a  copycenter license or public 
> domain dedication.
> They use that as a base,  making it into "the banana font" and Sarah's Swirly 
> Sans Serif, then sells those  as commercial fonts. If you look at the 
> programming post, you will see how the  best programmers know how to use snippets of 
> other people's work to create their  own. I also imagine someone may grab 
> glyphs, etc. from several different open  fonts, combine them into one, with their 
> own style...
> 
> > The CC-BY  License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
> >
> >This license  requires attribution - and for any *reuse* or distribution, 
> >requires  that the original license terms must be made clear to  others.
> >
> >Does this mean if someone uses a font under this license  to print a book
> >(which could be considered a kind of "reuse") that the  original license 
> >terms must be printed or indicated in the book? Does  there have to be an 
> >attribution?
> 
> Rejon, you work for CC, can you  explain this to us?
> CC Licenses are somewhat long, have some quirks, and  mainly people get 
> confused between CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-SA-ND, etc...I've seen  too many webpages & 
> content which simply say you may reuse this (whatever it  is I created) under 
> a Creative Commons license, but then failing to say which  one, which leaves 
> people in the dark as to what the author is saying they can  and cannot do 
> with the content.

CC discourages use of cc licenses for fonts. I am not a fulltime
employee of cc anymore and am only really work on a couple of projects
more like freelance/contractor right now for cc.

The CC website does a good job of explaining the differences between the
licenses far better than I: http://creativecommons.org/about/license/

I would break cc licenses down as: Free (CC BY, CC BY-SA), non-free (the
other 4).

Then all current licenses require attribution (aka a linkback and/or
credit to the author(s).

Jon

<snip />
-- 
Jon Phillips
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