[OpenFontLibrary] theleagueofmoveabletype.com is switching to the Open Font License

[ricardo lafuente]

Dave Crossland wrote:
> I spent a few days doing this about a year and a half ago; most emails
> attached to freeware fonts are now stale, and none of the freeware
> font authors I reached were interested in the OFL.
>   

Oh well.

> As NS already mentioned, he and I and Ed (and others, I forget) worked
> on a ODT/PDF "Go For OFL!" letter which got permission from various
> orgs to use their logo to lend credibility to the letter.
>   

The letter is very well written and the presented arguments are solid. 
However, my criticism of this campaign would be a broad focus on the 
benefits to the free desktop and not enough arguments for the benefits 
of the designers themselves, which are surely pretty clear in your 
reasoning but not present in the letter itself, i believe.

Mostly, the targets of this would be people who have no contact with the 
'free desktop' whatsoever, and use proprietary software to make their 
fonts, and that's why i think it's worth taking some time to build up a 
set of arguments targeting that specific public. Opportunistic as it 
might sound, one should IMHO try to convince them how the OFL benefits 
them, instead on how it benefits the FLOSS world.

But again, i won't be trying to just bash existing efforts and tell 
people how they should be doing stuff, so maybe this would be a start: 
http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/DesignersPerspectiveOpenFonts . My idea 
was doing a kind of FAQ, based on a kind of '10 myths about OFL' 
rationale to be able to present the line of thought i mentioned above.

>> if anyone's also up for it, i'd be interested in group-drafting a FAQ of
>> sorts for designers who might be reluctant to step towards libre licensing
>> of their work, clearing up common misunderstandings and allaying some fears
>> they might have regarding that.
>>     
>
> Jump into the wiki :-)
>   

I'm on it :)
>> quick list of designers that could later be approached:
>> * Jos Buivenga from exljbris (who releases some fonts as freeware as a
>> marketing device for selling extended families)
>> * Manfred Klein
>>     
>
> I didn't speak to either of these guys.
>   

Jos Buivenga (http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/) started by publishing 
gratis typefaces, and now is selling extended families. It's brought him 
a *lot* of fame recently in the type community as it's a business model 
that hasn't been seen with this kind of scale. However, his move is seen 
as a huge thing already (giving away many fonts to sell a few? Heresy!), 
so i wonder that trying to argue with him (and others) to consider the 
OFL could only work when the new OFLB website is up and they're able to 
see for themselves what this all means.

The designers of the fonts found over at www.fontsquirrel.com (a 
well-curated gratis font archive) might also be good to approach someday.

>> * Ray Larabie (the 'free font' legend, maybe he can be convinced to OFL some
>> of his older creations?)
>>     
>
> I spoke to him; not interested, but kindly explained at length why.

sad that a few of his fonts are available at the Ubuntu Multiverse 
repository, then :/

>> * LettError (did some funky font experiments, again could be convinced to
>> OFL some older stuff)
>>     
>
> Erik is on this list; I doubt he would OFL anything, but, I suppose
> the "free beer" fonts on the letterror site might have a better
> chance.
>   

indeed, that might work. On one hand (and thinking a bit more) i'm not 
very comfortable with going to proprietary designers and asking for 
their scraps. On the other, maybe it can be a start and a way to have 
them dip their feet (and see how the OFL can have practical benefits for 
them).

>> * House Industries (same as previous)
>> * Underware (even a longer shot, but who knows what experiments they might
>> have hidden in their drawers)
>>     
>
> I've asked some famous type designers about if they have a "secret
> stash" of half made type designs in the course of writing a yet to be
> published essay, and indeed some do. However, given that the purpose
> of this is to have half-formed projects that can be tailored to suit
> an incoming brief faster than the competition, I don't see why they
> would want to publish these things.
>
> I also think that they will believe they would lose some reputation
> for publishing "half-done" stuff.
>   

true, very good points there. Maybe there can be a way to hack that and 
have the 'half-done' release be a good thing... maybe a hackontest of 
sorts to build derived works from there. Again, on the other hand we're 
better off encouraging people to improve on already existing OFL works 
than feeding off the big guys' scraps. I'll be giving this some thought, 
i'm sure there's some way to make this work.

> I think I've reached a conclusion about this. Existing type designers
> want to know how they can get paid for doing type design for a living
> if they respect users' freedom. And they don't want to know how a
> couple can work for me, they want to know how all of the existing ones
> can flip their business around and earn they same kind of money. And
> the answer is, they can't, and so, they are not interested.
>
> The key word there is, "existing" :-)
>   

hmm -- should an OFL-FAQ for students/education/type courses be 
considered then? Maybe it wouldn't fly in US or UK type courses, but 
countries like Poland, Portugal, Romania or Hungary, where the 
proprietary culture isn't as rooted, where students deliver work made 
with pirated software and fonts (and teachers go 'don't ask don't 
tell'), and where FLOSS is gaining ground as colleges realise that 
teaching with pirated software (thanks to slashed budgets) is a big 
liability, something could come out of that. But this is long-term 
thinking, for sure.

and going full circle -- theleagueofmovabletype's fonts have been 
featured recently over at smashing magazine 
(http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/11/15-fresh-high-quality-free-fonts/). 


Jos Buivenga's free fonts have been a huge hit in Portuguese graphic 
designer circles (you routinely see them in ads and newspapers) just 
because they're free and very well made. Now that TLOMT are switching, 
the bridge between both worlds (FLOSS & design) might begin to happen, 
since in my experience most resistance to FLOSS in general by designer 
circles is that 'free can't mean good'. That perception is already being 
shaken, so the question i'm personally interested in is how 1. type 
designers can be convinced to open-source their stuff and 2. graphic 
designers can be convinced to use OFL fonts instead of gratis ones.
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