[OpenFontLibrary] Props OFLB & dev account request & question

[Schrijver]

Hello!

--props & my perspective--
(as posted on typophile)
You could turn it around. Shouldn’t type designers be interested in  
exactly what it is, that makes visual artists, graphic designers and  
computer geeks band up to take the actual effort to start developing  
new development methods for type design? At the point where we would  
band up to ask type designers to give us free fonts, you can still  
dismiss us as cheapskates. But the fact that we are taking all this  
effort clearly shows that the current produce of the type industry  
does not meet our needs.

And I do not think anyone involved in these efforts would state the  
superiority or even the relevance of their typographic judgment as  
primary factors involved.

So why not be a bit more curious to find out what is driving us?  
Ultimately, regardless of your stance in all the ideological  
bickering, this seems to be a very real issue among the public, who  
are your potential public, and ultimately your revenue stream.

&

Because with all the OFLB reserves flying around, isn’t it also  
obvious to everyone that their new site proves to be a major  
accomplishment in these areas? I find the design frankly to be the  
single best looking site I have seen in ages. Which is an even more  
able accomplishment when you realise they build it around MediaWiki— 
really, the blue and white one. They also managed to mash this up with  
CCHost, which should be a major technological pain in the -, and there  
is some superspiffy Javascript going on with the live glyph previews.

--dev account request--

1. Sign up for openclipart.org (add your blog, blog feed, and join the  
mailing list)
chck

2. Make one significant contribution to the community (whether code,  
some task, etc)

Well I did something outside of your community which IMHO nevertheless  
constitutes a contribution to yours: I took it upon myself to engage  
in some social hacking to illuminate the common ground between the  
closed and open source type world.

http://typophile.com/node/55128 (where I also posted above props)

Now I have been saying both nice and critical things about the FOSS  
type world, but what I think is especially significant that somebody  
else than me (Andy J) ended up stating things that IMHO clearly show  
the willingness to reason from both perspective:
> Second reaction: If I truly expect the Open Source community to do  
> anything for me, I’d better be willing to enter their world a bit,  
> if only to speak the same language. In this case that would mean  
> bucking up and actually using GIT. Plus, it makes requests much more  
> effective.
>
> - - -
> EDIT: BTW, I wasn’t saying a design spec from the open source  
> community is not important. I definitely agree that it is, if any  
> useful type is to be developed. I was hoping to diffuse some of the  
> US versus THEM mentality by pointing out that similarly, creating  
> useful type in a collaborative way would be greatly aided by a spec  
> for better tools (which the Open Source community could deliver).
>
3. email the list with your desired username and htpasswd file which  
may be generated here:

schlib:rEvHLcS0FDoqo

-- Question --

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find Jon’s post about the  
SVN accounts, because that should make it a lot more easy to involve  
the community in the final efforts prior to the launch.

Now I was thinking, is there any possibility that the site will be  
moved over to the new server this week? Because I think the  
simultanous events taking place across the globe thursday/friday (not  
only Libre Graphics, but also Robothon in The Hague (type & python  
scripting; UFO) and Edit in Bordeaux (taking a more conceptual and  
academic approach towards developments relevants to FOSS and  
publishing etc.) would make for a nice frame to do a code sprint and  
highlight OFLB and related initiatives…

I can imagine the thread I linked to can prove as interesting food for  
a similar discussion over here. Actually, I think I sort of owe it to  
the type designers to also harass you guys with my unsollicited  
opinions :-) but IMHO the practicalities should better be fixed first  
no?

Later tonight I will try and get on the IRC.

Best!

Eric