Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
d. collins wrote:
What exactly is an open-source font?
and I would suggest that it is an extension of the idea of open-source code, that is a font which anyone could freely alter according to one's own whims, as one can open source code in a software program. Presumably in the license one obtains to use a commercial font, one is prevented from reverse engineering it, so that, for example, if one wanted to replicate some of the old English style of choral music, where the melismatic inter-syllabic and intraword characters is the dot, rather than the hyphen, one is not able to alter the commercial font to do this without special permission.
That said, in the U.S., there is a special morass regarding fonts. By statute in the U.S., "fonts" are expressly not copyrightable, to the consternation of font designers. In typical fashion, though, the U.S. courts muddied the waters in a case brought by Adobe (as I recall, may have been someone else) against an individual in Florida, who attempted to remarket adobe's fonts. As I understand it, the gist of the ruling is that because computer fonts are produced by processing through software, they are computer programs, and eligible for copyright protection, where the exact same typeface, if engraved into a die, and cast, would not be.
ns
I thought that case found that while the font design itself was still not copyrightable, the software used to define that font for use on a computer WAS definable. So .ttf files are copyrightable while their output isn't. Thus others can create their own versions of the fonts and as long as they don't simply copy the electronic files of the originals they're fine. Sort of reverse-engineering.
You can't just remarket Adobe's font files, but you can use Fontographer or another font creation program to design your own version of the font, and even though it looks exactly the same, Adobe can't sue you for copyright infringement.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
