Markus Kuhn wrote: > I found that simply declaring the output of a font project to be > under the "public domain - share and enjoy" license is the simplest > and most easy to understand solution that will encourage most > contributions and will waste the least time with such > discussions.
I agree that it's the simplest solutions, but I am not sure that it's the wisest... > I believe that de-facto free software is not controlled in any way > by licences, but by whoever puts most work into the product. Many of > these abstract and semi-informed license discussions are not > relevant in practice. Licences matter only if people plan to sue > each other, which as far as I know hasn't happened since the > legendary BSD tape driver issue over a decade ago that led to the > BSD licence being written. Copyright laws worldwide make some restrictions on the use of peoples work. Licenses can be used either to add even more restrictions (e.g. EULA) or to subtract some (or even all?) restrictions (e.g. BSD/GPL). If I make a font, I want some restrictions on my work. I don't want people to do just about anything with my font, but I do want less restrictions than the standard copyright makes. If you just take my font without a second thought and go against restrictions, I could get upset, and if I did got upset enough, yes, I could sue you. But I wouldn't, just as FSF hasn't sued anyone yet, but instead I would try to settle the issue with you so that you wouldn't make the same mistake in the future. Suppose we ignore philosophical and ethical issues and look at this practically. What is better for the development of the font itself is an open question. That other people can do anything with your font (if it was public domain) doesn't necessary mean that font would become better than the font with GPL-like restrictions. > First there has to be a font at all before discussiing obscure and > irrelevant legal thingies becomes justified, if at all. Well, as I am waiting for PfaEdit to became better, there is time discuss this :-) I wouldn't say that licensing is irrelevant, because after all, copyright laws exist, and mo matter how much you (and I) wish they didn't, you cannot just ignore them. However, if you make a font and keep it to yourself, the copyright issues don't arise :-) -- Sergej Malinovski [http://dreamer.nitro.dk] _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
