[Openfontlibrary] [OpenType] Proprietary (Off Topic)

[Dave Crossland]

2008/11/6 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net>:
> Le Jeu 6 novembre 2008 05:09, Christopher Fynn a écrit :
>
> You don't have to single out Red Hat, Google made pretty much the same
> choice with Droid (and didn't bother licensing it clearly at the same
> time).

Red Hat's Liberation font licensing isn't clear of controversy either,
though they certainly did a better job than Google.

> I think the reasons have little to do with free/libre designer talent.

:-)

> It's more like
> - the people in charge of those decisions tend to be marketing/art
> people not as sensitive to free/libre questions as other people in the
> organisations

In my experience, they can be, they just have to be sweet-talked. :-)

> - (to beat an old drum) with very few exceptions free/libre font
> creators fail massively at the distribution stage (licensing choice,
> distribution format, etc) and do not project a reliable image. And the
> people that could push free/libre solutions within organisations tend
> to be put out by all this mess. A plain ttf file on a random web page
> with no clear licence attached (or with a license buried in font
> metadata), no vcs, no changelog, no bug tracker, not even a version is
> not going to make people invest in you

These are all staple "best practices" of software development, and
that they apply directly to font development is also evidence IMO that
fonts are software and it is good to treat them as such :-)

> - with very few exceptions free/libre font creators fail to organise
> themselves in teams able to make publish regular enhancements to their
> fonts. The lonely inspired artist may be very romantic, but to part
> entities with some of them hard-earned cash you need to reassure on
> your ability to deliver on time (you may object it's the same
> proprietary font size but buyers see *foundries* that will allocate
> manpower as needed to hit deadlines).
>
> Success attracts success and the critical mass seems not to be there
> yet. Though I think some of the creators of the most mature fonts
> (dejavu, libertine, etc) could get themselves hired if they made some
> concrete proposal to one of the Fedora/OpenSuse/Ubuntu community
> leaders during ne of the numerous FLOSS conferences they regularly
> attend.

:-)