[Pkg-fonts-devel] fonts.debian.net proposal -- web fonts

[Dave Crossland]

Hi,

Dan, this is a worthy project, and I hope the work done in the
OpenFontLibrary.org project could help - its undergoing a very heavy
development period right now -
http://blog.manufacturaindependente.org/ - and the next release -
https://launchpad.net/openfontlibrary/+milestone/0.3 - will make it
much easier for people to contribute features to its backend web app.
It should be possible to host a Debian specific version of the OFLB
backend and do what you want :-)

On 26 August 2011 06:51, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:35:29AM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
>> hi Gurkan and the debian fonts team--
>>
>> What if http://fonts.debian.net/ could generate web font files (in at
>> least the standard eot form, maybe in woff as well) and publish them
>> under a stable URL?
>
> EOT is not standard, and is only supported by Internet Explorer.>

It is 'standard' but not 'a standard' - it is widespread, and I
believe support for it is necessary for useful web font serving. There
is free software that implements most of the format, ttf2eot, but the
MTX compression parts of EOT format are patent encumbered in the USA.

>> If this could be done with a commitment to avoid tracking users (and
>> maybe also to offer it optionally under https to avoid mixed-content
>> warnings), it would make it very easy for web authors to use any font in
>> debian, just by specifying it in their CSS.
>>
>> This would be similar to Google's Web Fonts directory [0], but without
>> the surveillance, and with a focus on free fonts.
>
> Google Web Fonts directory has a focus on free (libre) fonts;

Yes.

On 26 August 2011 09:04, Paul Sladen <pkg-fonts at paul.sladen.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Aug 2011, Khaled Hosny wrote:
>> Google Web Fonts directory has a focus on free (libre) fonts; all its
>> fonts are licensed under OFL v1.1 or Apache 2.0 (not sure if the are now
>> accepting other free licenses).
>
> For completeness,
>
>  http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Ubuntu
>  "Ubuntu Font License, 1.0"

As someone akin to the release manager for GWF, I can confirm that all
fonts in GWF are under 3 licenses, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (most,
designer-owned), Apache 2.0 (a few, Google owned), and Ubuntu Font
License (one, Canonical owned)


Cheers
Dave