[Pkg-fonts-devel] Re: [Openfontlibrary] Re: [DejaVu-fonts] forming new maintenance team for MPH 2B Damase?

[Jon Phillips]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 15:17 +0000, Victor Gaultney wrote:
> Everyone -
> 
> > Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> is the author and he released it
> > into the public domain...
> 
> Far be it from me to discourage development of free fonts, but I don't think
> Mark has the rights to release it into the public domain. In a quick look at
> the font, I saw many font styles I recognised - including ones that are not
> currently under free licenses. For example, the Sylheti Nagri glyphs are an
> identical copy (node for node, coordinate for coordinate) of the Sylheti
> font available from http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page5.html. That font is
> freeware, but is not under public domain, or any FLOSS license.
> 
> I hate to sound like the font police, but this font is not legal, as it
> contains copyrighted material from other fonts without any acknowledgement.
> I'm not at all implying that Mark intentionally intended to breach
> copyright, as it is particularly common in South Asia to find fonts that
> have been copied with the copyright stripped out, replaced with public
> domain. Mark may have copied glyphs from one of those fonts. I just think
> someone ought to do a little more research to be sure that all the contents
> are truly free. It may even be that some of Mark's sources could be
> convinced to release OFL versions of their fonts!
> 
> If we want to get the typographic community's support behind free and open
> source fonts, we have to prove to them that we honour copyright. Otherwise
> all our arguments fall flat, and designers will run from FLOSS and the OFLB
> like the plague. 
> 
> V.
> 
> -----------------
> Victor Gaultney
> SIL International

Ok, that sounds good. Lets just see if he pushes on it, otherwise leave
it up to the fate of who does the work to attempt verify and/or submit
it.

I agree on the validity of things and legality on all points...I like
that term though, "font police." ;)

Jon

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Jon Phillips

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