On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 11:43:24AM +0100, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: [...] > I think that having a lot of fonts which are "similar but not quite entirely unlike" the original is rather #disturbing. Possibly. But why do you need copyright law to fix this problem? That was, I thought, part of what Dave was saying (unless I read too much into it), that trademark law gives you sufficient 'protection'. [...] > >> If 'Overpass' is considered a valuable Red Hat trademark, I'd > >> personally suggest declaring trademark notices alongside copyright > >> notices for both licenses. > > > > That may make good sense; let me think about this. > > I'd recommend the perspective of designers are also taken into account in this discussion and not just the perspective of hosting services. Just to be clear, I'm not taking some general policy stance against use of the 'Reserved Font Name'. > Not reserving any names is certainly an option thas is built into the OFL but you have to be fully aware of the advantages you are choosing to give up and the consequences this will have. My view on this is, if the maintainer of the fonts thinks it might be a good idea not to use the 'Reserved Font Name' mechanism, and the reasons seem to be valid on their face, let's go ahead and do that. If the world comes to an end as a result I will admit that I was wrong. :) [...] > Reading through the OFL FAQ (along with previous public discussion on the topic) should help make it clear that what can be seen as the OFL "hello world" trick is actually a feature of the license and not a bug. Okay, that is reassuring. However, for the first time since becoming aware of the SIL OFL I have confirmation that this provision: Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself. is meant to be completely toothless, purely a form of "social signalling". I do not understand what the point of such signalling is, because you are actually signalling that we don't have to take the signalling seriously. The signal is broken. > I haven't seen any Libre Software projects reject Vera/Dejavu/etc because of such a clause. Why should it be different now? As Dave himself correctly pointed out some time ago, it's because free software developers have had a tacit double standard when it comes to fonts. Fonts are held to a lower standard of what 'freeness' or 'openness' means. That doesn't bother me so much as the nearly universal failure of anyone to acknowledge it. - RF _______________________________________________ fonts mailing list fonts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/
