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yes, I read it, and the "support" for OFL is not nearly as strong as is claimedyes, I read it, and the "support" for OFL is not nearly as strong as is claimedPosted Jan 27, 2006 21:19 UTC (Fri) by stevenj (guest, #421)In reply to: did you actually *read* the answer? by gvy Parent article: Gentium: An award-winning font joins the free software world (NewsForge)
Just because the FSF says it is a free-software license (something I do not contest) doesn't mean it is a well-crafted license. The FSF considers lots of licenses "free" that they don't particularly recommend. I looked on the OFL-discuss list, and I don't see any representative of a group experienced with FLOSS licensing saying that the OFL is particularly a good idea. I do see Jim Gettys posting expressing concern about "license proliferation" and suggesting that they should get input from Eben Moglen of the FSF. I see Gervase Markham of Mozilla.org (who is also not a lawyer) also making some substantial criticisms of the license and also expressing concern about license proliferation. The FontForge link is someone pointing it out as an example of a license designed for fonts, with no particular analysis of whether it is a well-crafted license or not. Besides, random developers are notoriously bad at evaluating licenses...that's one of the reasons why there are so many poorly-crafted ones floating around (cough, Artistic license, cough). You really need to get competent legal counsel, experienced in free software, involved in such a thing. The FSF, OSI, and CreativeCommons are good resources; Groklaw might also be helpful. I can see the need for a good free font license, but this is not a task for amateurs.
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yes, I read it, and the "support" for OFL is not nearly as strong as is claimed Posted Jan 28, 2006 16:50 UTC (Sat) by yosch (guest, #4675) [Link] Well, thanks again for your respectful insights.
We actually submitted the license to many experts in the community including Lawrence Lessig, Eben Moglen and Bruce Perens. We are in touch with Debian and Ubuntu people and are discussing the license with debian-legal. The discussion with the community is by no means stopping.
No license is ever perfect. The Open Font License 1.0 is designed to enable font designers to work together and improve the state of non-restricted typography and I think we're getting there.
Of course, there will always be those who prefer criticizing...
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yes, I read it, and the "support" for OFL is not nearly as strong as is claimed Posted Jan 29, 2006 13:36 UTC (Sun) by rehdon (guest, #29998) [Link] I, for one, am grateful for your efforts in providing a high quality font to open source user.
rehdon
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