On May 20, 2013, at 9:31 AM, Élie Roux wrote: > When I started the gregorio software project, I needed a font that I could > modify and build easily, so when I saw that Gregoria was not filling these > needs, I created a new font, Gregorio, from scratch.
Oh, I thought the main reason for a new Gregorio font was that Elena Albertoni's deal with the Abbey didn't allow to freely distribute Gregoria with the Gregorio software. I was thus wondering if some agreement was made, however, to just use the existing Gregoria design, but only in a form of a new, more rough implementation that wouldn't have any niceties of the original, and that could also meet Omega's technical limitations. >> Different implementation gives a clear legal status for the Gregorio font >> software, I suppose, but isn't a particular type design, as opposed to font >> software, also under copyright in France? Was this an issue? How it was >> dealt with? > > I have to say I'm not sure I clearly understood what you say here... > According to me, this is no issue, it's like when you make a Time or Garamond > typeface: these designs exist for centuries, and are in the public domain, > and so is the design of gregorian chant scores. The particular implementation > Gregorio looks a little like the particular implementation Gregoria (though > you'll see many differences), but they both look like what has been done for > centuries. It's like if you said that EB Garamond > (http://www.georgduffner.at/ebgaramond/, which I encourage people to use) is > a copy of Adobe (or Stempel) Garamond, which it isn't... Yes, for new implementations of historical designs, i.e., for the so-called revivals, there's no issue. Different revivals of a Garamond are indeed a good example of that; what is copyrightable in that case is a particular execution of font software, not the design itself. But for designs that are new, or that are only inspired by historical designs and have enough new stylistic ideas as to not be considered as plain revivals, copyright for either or both their design and implementation, according to the country of origin, of course applies. In much all of the world, the usual case is that it's the font software alone that can be copyrighted, actually, but in France, as far as I know, type designs are copyrighted as well. I think the question whether Gregoria in itself should be considered a copyrightable design on its own, or whether Gregorio could be considered a Gregoria's derivative, is really a question of what exactly constitutes an artistic expression in musical notation. It's even less obvious for a plain chant notation, where there's no much room for stylization and it's all really, really subtle. I've raised this issue about Gregoria in particular, because it's overall look feels slightly more stylized than the one of Caeciliae, for example, something that even Caeciliae's Matthew Spencer acknowledges at his site. Furthermore, Gregoria has won a Type Directors Club's award, not without a reason, I suppose: http://tdc.org/news/2007Results/. > I spent quite an amount of time on Gregorio (though at least 10 times more > would have been better), and learned many useful things with some expert > monks; it made me adapt Caeciliae (into greciliae) in a way that, on some > points, looks better than the original... I haven't done much of a comparison between the two, frankly. Their overall style looks alike and I've just assumed, given the descriptions on the project's site, that Gregorio was a technical adaptation of Gregoria. But if you say it's a newly born design with different process and lessons learned, then I think that's cool. > Anyway, this discussion is interesting, feel free to disagree! If you really > think Gregorio is an illegal carbon-copy of Gregoria, I would be ready to > delete it, though I disagree with the statement... I really wouldn't want to nor make any statements like this at all, the more I wouldn't want anybody to delete it. In all, the music fonts industry is, unfortunately, subject of such an in-house-only development and trade secrecy, and Gregorian chant fonts themselves are such a niche, that it's indeed hard to make any definite statements that we know or could expect from the regular font business. Thank you, Élie. My kind regards, Grzegorz Rolek _______________________________________________ Gregorio-devel mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/gregorio-devel
