Re: [Openfontlibrary] [OpenType] Proprietary (Off Topic)
2008/11/6 Christopher Fynn [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As far as I can make out Ascender Corp. have absolutely no commitment to Free/Libré fonts Here is my point: They made a free software font and their cash flow was positive. I did not say they were committed to free software. Obviously they are not. maybe there was no one in the free/libré font software developer community capable of making such fonts. This is not really true, there are a very small number of people in the free software community making such fonts. The Deja Vu team, and Victor Gaultney of Gentium fame, spring to mind immediately. So it is not really no one. But yes, those guys are not marketing themselves like Ascender do. Someone could do so, though - I plan to when I graduate. It seems to me this hasn't happened before because people have looked at doing free software fonts startups and talked themselves out of it. Oh no, the cashflow will be negative, this it too much work, it will never happen, no no no. Yes we can, anyone? :-) ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] [OpenType] Proprietary (Off Topic)
2008/11/6 Liam R E Quin [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-11-06 at 10:09 +0600, Christopher Fynn wrote: [...] I'm not criticizing Ascender Corp. who do have particular expertise in making highly legible screen fonts ~ but, for the money they spent, could Red Hat not hire any one in the free/libré software community to develop these fonts? Did they even try? Or maybe there was no one in the free/libré font software developer community capable of making such fonts. I know that when we (Jim Gettys, Keith Packard and I) talked with Bitstream, leading to getting Vera made available, we also contacted a number of other font designers first. At the time we didn't find any type designers who were working on free/Libre fonts and who could do the necessary work in our price range -- one quote we got was for between $100K and $150K, for example. We knew we needed fonts that would look good on the screen, and that had a solid character set. I expect you can't answer this, but, how much _did_ Vera cost? :-) I can't speak for why Red Hat went to Ascender, but right now it's pretty hard to find someone willing to work on Free fonts and with significant experience at type design, except by going down the work-for-hire route. Maybe openfontlibrary.org will change that. I'm sure it will :-) ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] [OpenType] Proprietary (Off Topic)
2008/11/6 Nicolas Mailhot [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 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. :-) ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] [OpenType] Proprietary (Off Topic)
Dave Crossland wrote: Secondly, there is the specific case of the cashflow being positive. First there are the one-off cases: Ascender seems to have made money doing it recently for Google and Red Hat, and Evertype also did a paid free software font job recently. Exactly - when Red Hat and Google wanted fonts they did *not* turn to any of the developers of Free/Libré fonts (many of which which Red Hat has in its Linux distributions) they turned to the commercial Ascender Corp. which gets paid well to make and hint digital fonts. Ascender's other clients include Microsoft. As far as I can make out Ascender Corp. have absolutely no commitment to Free/Libré fonts - they made or licensed these fonts on contract and once they sold rights and got the cash from Red Hat, it probably makes little difference to them what model and license Red Hat used to distribute them. (In fact they are getting good publicity for making fonts distributed under a GPL license - many people assume they donated them.) I'm not criticizing Ascender Corp. who do have particular expertise in making highly legible screen fonts ~ but, for the money they spent, could Red Hat not hire any one in the free/libré software community to develop these fonts? Did they even try? Or maybe there was no one in the free/libré font software developer community capable of making such fonts. - Chris ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
