Re: Fonts WG Charter feedback

A quick follow up to the Håkon/JohnH. exchange
before I attend to Mr. Hudson's thoughtful letter
to me....

Håkon, you object to new font formats that add
more "licensing information".   I think that you
mean formats that define certain new meta-data as
licensing information per se.

Do you object to new formats for font files that
add new meta-data for end-user consumption, where
that new meta-data format specification is agnostic
as to whether or not licensing data is included?

For example, if formats were extended so that
generic user-facing meta-data could be in HTML5
and used for any purpose, have you an objection
to that?

-t



On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 15:18 -0700, John Hudson wrote:
> Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> 
> > Personally, I'm not comfortable with formats that add more licensing
> > information, even if the corresponding standard says it can be
> > ignored. It seems quite easy to construct a case where the browser, by
> > ignoring digital rights in the files, breaks DMCA-like laws and is
> > therefore a "circumvention device". I'm not convinced that the
> > standard would trump the law in court.
> 
> Since this would be an OT font format decision, at least it would be 
> something debated in a forum in which the opinions of font developers 
> and vendors are not 'pragmatically irrelevant'. Come on over to our 
> standards process. I'm going to be happier fighting this out in ISO/IEC 
> 14496-22 than in the W3C.
> 
> So here's a question: if the OpenType / Open Font format specification 
> already included licensing information of the kind that you wish to 
> avoid, would you have implemented TTF/OTF font linking in Opera?
> 
>  From which follows the question: if such licensing information were to 
> be added to the OpenType / Open Font format specification, would you 
> remove support for TTF/OTF font linking in Opera?
> 
> These are not necessarily 'pragmatic' questions, but at this point I'm 
> interested to know where leverage might apply.
> 
> John Hudson
>

Received on Monday, 6 July 2009 22:27:41 UTC