[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Treatment of the OFL in the wild

[Vernon Adams]

On 7 Jun 2013, at 05:46, Victor Gaultney <vtype at gaultney.org> wrote:

> The terms 'embedding' and 'distribution' have very specific meanings in the OFL context, and are mutually exclusive. Here is a slightly expand form of what is said in the FAQ:
> 
> Embedding = inclusion of font data solely for purposes of viewing that one enclosing document, and in a way that makes extraction difficult or clearly discouraged.
> 
> Distribution= inclusion of font data with the intention of allowing it to be used for other docs, or in a way that makes extraction and redistribution easy.
> 


This i what i pointed at earlier. The OFL defines a font's usage as either 'embedding' or 'distribution'. According to the OFL, a font can't be treated as both. But i think the biggest usage of OFL'd fonts today (base 64 encoded woff files served from a central server to users browsers) seems to fall into both :) This is what is causing any problems or confusion.
These webfonts fit the 'embedding' definition because it can be argued that they are included for sole purpose of typesetting the web page they are sent to the browser with. Also their 'extraction' could be seen as 'difficult' (compared to 'click here to download your free-to-use OTF / TTF"), and as i have pointed out their distribution system has been designed to make extraction (of proprietary fonts) 'not easy'.
But… it can also be argued that the fonts are 'distributions', because actual font files can be practically pulled from the browser cache, and used as is, or converted to another format for printing with etc etc.

-vern