Vous (Dave Crossland) avez ?crit?: > 2008/5/24 Peter Nermander <peter at nermander.se>: > > I wish fonts would be licensed the same way for example photographs > > But fonts are functional software, and photos are typically decorative > artwork.
Since we?re yet in Gutenberg era, we can?t say that a font is a pure functional piece of software. As of today, it?s still a collection of graphic elements (more than decorative I agree, and one could even argue that glyphs as part of a script system _are_ logical elements but it would lead to a rather long discussion with the need of a lot of wine, etc.) encapsulated in a simplistic software. We can imagine or hope or think or guess that in the future fonts will be actual "scripter" programs. I mean not just handle the pre-processing known as shaper (note that it does not nowadays) but also offer all necessary logic to preserve text color (MM fonts or METAFONT fonts address(ed?) some of these problems but both are not largely used in a "graphic design" context) through justification where you might want to distort glyphs and alter spaces, and more. But even in this future, I think we?ll be some persons (yeah, plain old-fashioned!) to just refuse such integrated systems and want to use glyphs as they are rather than format text --- what I?ve prepared for myself by writting Undertype ;-) So, I don?t think that glyphs should be licensed as photos because they are not just artwork, I don?t think either that they can be treated as plain software, nor double licensed! So, I don?t know exactly, just think that moral right (rough translation from FR) should be preserved. > > Fonts ought to be like Scribus: free as in freedom. Free fonts are panacea, but exception too :) -- Pierre Marchand
