Any objection to the OFL?

[Bill Reese]

Steve,

It's my understanding that fonts aren't the characters of an alphabet or 
script - they're stylistic representations of those characters.  It's 
conceivable that someone could create a font of SignWriting that gives 
it a specific style - such as "Arial" or "Times Romans".  There seems to 
be no question that anyone creating one should have the right to assign 
whatever license they want to that font - just as they do with other 
alphabets and scripts.  I believe the question then becomes, if the OFL 
is used to assign a license to the characters of an alphabet or script, 
regardless of style, would it then need to be assigned to all other 
alphabets or scripts, such as Latin, Cyrillic, Hiragana, Chinese, etc.?

It would seem that SignWriting should be in the same class as those.  
SignWriting is used to create written forms of established natural 
languages the same way Latin characters have been used to create written 
forms of other established natural languages in the last 70 years or so.

Bill


Steve Slevinski wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> We've been discussing licensing issues for SignWriting.  I think the 
> Open Font License is ideal for the SignWriting symbol sets.
>
> You can read the online version:
> http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
>
> Under the OFL, I do not see any negatives and many positives.  This is 
> not a major change compared to what we are doing right now.
> This licensing is important for widespread adoption in the free and 
> open source world as well as the proprietary, commercial world.
> You will be free to use the symbol sets for any type of writing.  You 
> will be free to use the symbol set with software and include the 
> symbol set as part of the software.  You will be free to modify the 
> symbol set as long as you release the modified symbol set under the 
> OFL.  You can redistribute the symbol set almost any way you want.  
> The main restriction is that you can't sell the font by itself.
>
> Does anyone have  any concerns?  Please ask questions or read the 
> license itself.  It's about 1 page long and can be read in about 5 
> minutes.
> http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
>
> Regards,
> -Steve
>