Use of "Ubuntu" as font name [LWN.net]

Use of "Ubuntu" as font name

Posted Oct 14, 2010 12:51 UTC (Thu) by sladen (subscriber, #27402)
In reply to: Short-term vs. longer-term by rahulsundaram
Parent article: The Ubuntu font and a fresh look at open font licensing

It's entirely possible, yes; and I filed a bug along those lines some months ago. ...In the opposite direction, it is also possible that use of the font family may eclipse use of the distribution (or even a son-of-Ubuntu-Font-Family, as has been the case with DejaVu):

"Ubuntu Maag font lacks unique name-of-its-own"
bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/602870

The bug tracker would be a useful, long-term location to record such thoughts and make it easier to act on them. In the mean-time, hopefully the very existence of the Ubuntu Font Family (regardless of name, or ultimate libre licence) is contributing to the expansion and visibility of the libre/open font community, as well as contributing to the readability and beauty of various desktop themes.

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Use of "Ubuntu" as font name

Posted Oct 14, 2010 15:35 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I think if Canonical is interested in the font getting widely used, it needs a vendor and distribution neutral name and free license. Otherwise it is just a non starter and won't useful to the broader community.

Use of "Ubuntu" as font name

Posted Oct 14, 2010 17:27 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I'd have to concur with regard to the font name. It's a bit weird how branding is a double-edged sword inside our ecosystem when it comes to project naming.

Though I will say having Ubuntu in the licensing name probably won't stop people from using the license if its a good fit for their needs. Historically that really hasn't worked that way. Didn't stop people from picking up the MIT X11 license and reusing it outside of its original use by MIT. Hasn't stopped people using the BSD license outside of BSD. Hasn't stopped the uptake of the Affero GPL license even though Affero Inc. is a privately held for-profit entity. If this "interim" license hangs around too long.. its not going to be "interim" for other people who pick it up and reuse it...or fork this font into a new project. The forked project won't have to follow Canonical's planned re-licensing. I could take the published font right now...fork it..rename it..and we'd be stuck with the "interim" license terms on something.

What's more disturbing still is the blanket copyright assignment requirement to Canonical for these fonts. Canonical continues to push its copyright assignment agenda. Aaron Siego's comments about how Canonical's assignment policy could be fixed to be more balanced and still provide good-faith re-licensing powers is an important read.

Read the comment discussion. You can have a contributor agreement that gives a central authority _limited_ ability to relicense in good-faith without giving them the power to create a proprietary fork of the codebase. Aaron goes to some length explaining how KDE's managing entity does this to balance all interests.

-jef