2008/11/6 Nicolas Mailhot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> I think the language in the GPL and Apache licenses about software >> idea patents are useful to think about here.... But I haven't seen >> anyone in the free software community comment on this, though. > > You must remember that free/open fonts have much higher licensing > requirements than proprietary fonts (where you can always ask the > legal department to replace their latest stupid clause with another > stupid clause in case of problem or market change like @font-face or > embedding). In free/open projects you often inherit licensing from > someone else and tracing back all the right holders to effect a > licensing change is usually prohibitively complex.
Sure - I'm talking only about totally new fonts of totally new typeface designs (humour me) - like the kind the original poster suggested he would make. > Free/open licenses must stand the test of time and be simple enough > anyone can understand them and work in international contexts. > Licenses like the GPL had lots of legal work put in to achieve this. > Most font-specific licenses fail miserably because they include too > much font-designer-oriented complexity that introduces new failure > point. I think the compatibility framework laid out in *GPLv3 allows for the ideas of the OFL to be put into a good strong-copyleft license. Sadly I haven't found a lawyer to work with on this, though Nicolas Spalinger and I have been chatting about it informally for a while. -- Regards, Dave _______________________________________________ Openfontlibrary mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
