[OpenFontLibrary] Kernest’s Web Font Serving Engine – Fontue – Now Open Source

[Ed Trager]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Barry Schwartz
<chemoelectric at chemoelectric.org> wrote:
> Nicolas Spalinger <nicolas_spalinger at sil.org> skribis:
>> I like the way you're not hiding the origin, license and other metadata
>> of the libre/open fonts you include in your catalog  (Ahem unlike others
>> apparently: http://readableweb.com/typekit-and-copyright-fraud/ but they
>> promised they will work on clarifying it..)
>
> More like blog fraud, if you ask me. :) But TypeKit did make the
> mistake of writing language that sounds "legal", rather than
> English. (The ISC license is the only I can think of that is written
> in English, and for that you have to disregard the disclaimer, which
> is written in Alpha Centauran.)
>
> TypeKit embeds my fonts, as a service to others; they should embed the
> copyright string with the font, but it doesn't really matter, because
> I do not require attribution when someone embeds my fonts. Some _do_
> require attribution for embedding (Jos Buivenga, for one), but I'm not
> sure it's TypeKit who needs to do the attributing; rather the website
> using the font.
>
> Personally, I think requiring attribution for the use of a text font
> is somewhat like requiring a painter to follow the signature with a
> note about what brand of paint, brushes, palettes, and easles were
> used.
>
>

People who are really interested in fonts often will know already who
the font author is, and will make the effort to find out if they like
the font.  Other people don't care as much and so will most likely not
pay much attention to the attribution even if it is present.  So in
the end analysis, it may not make that much difference whether
attribution is given or not ...