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

[Victor Gaultney]

Mark -

> On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 05:32 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
>> Mr Gaultney's allegation that he "recognizes many font styles" is
>> irrelevant. Styles of font cannot be copyrighted. Indeed, there are
>> often many different individual font _faces_ by many different authors
>> which share _styles_ although the shapes of the glyphs still differ.

I am well aware of that, and didn't intend to imply that all the styles I
recognised were direct copies of other fonts. It was seeing familiar styles
that led me to investigate one of them - Sylheti. I took a loot at that
range amd found it to be identical in every way to a non-free font. That set
the alarm bells ringing, as that hinted that the font software (the
nodes/curves themselves) was copied, which is not legal. I stopped there.

>> Victor is welcome to comb the ranges whose "styles" he recognizes...

That's really your responsibility, Mark - to be sure that all the contents
are your own. I'm glad to hear that Sylheti seems to be the exception, and
glad that there are efforts to fix that. (BTW - I met the people who made
the Sylheti font some years ago, and they seem to be generous, reasonable
people. I'm guessing that they might be willing to release their font under
the OFL, which would allow the glyphs to be legally included in other fonts.
You could contact them and ask.)

The best way to show the community that the work is your own is to copyright
it. Then future maintainers and improvers have added confidence in working
on it, knowing that you've stuck your neck out to claim it is yours.

My hope was that by calling attention to the problem, the font's legal
status could be resolved, and a revised, legal version prepared. It sounds
like that's happening, so I'm happy.

Victor