RE: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC

How about I change "Microsoft will never give redistribution rights" to
"Microsoft is not likely to give redistribution rights". Never is a
really long time and things do change sometimes.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Paul Nelson (ATC)
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 7:05 AM
To: Ian Hickson
Cc: www-style@w3.org
Subject: RE: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC


One has to click/accept the EULA for installing Vista, Office update,
etc. Microsoft will never give redistribution rights to fonts we have
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to create. 

EOT is not a font redistribution mechanism. It is a font embedding
scheme which allows for a temporary install of the font for the process
the page is displayed on that is tied to one or more specific root
domain (unless the font has redistribution rights, e.g. free fonts, it
can be open to any domain). When the page is closed, the font is removed
from the machine. Thus, EOT format is an way that the font makers agreed
to 10 years ago where their fonts can be used with web content that
limits casual font misappropriation.

TTF use with web pages would be an easy way for people to install the
fonts without reading EULAs if applicable and would make unintentional
font misuse a common occurrence. "Oh, I didn't know there was a license
for that font." Of course they didn't. It is out there free to use like
all sorts of other things.

EOT also allows for font compression to reduce the download size. A 75kb
font is not an issue. However, a 1.5MB or 14MB Asian font would
be...especially if the device to render the web content is a mobile
phone.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch] 
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 2:38 AM
To: Paul Nelson (ATC)
Cc: www-style@w3.org
Subject: RE: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007, Paul Nelson (ATC) wrote:
> >
> > One could even use the TTF as is... if Microsoft will implement TTF 
> > support.
> 
> One cannot use the TTF as is. That is strictly against the EULA that 
> people have accepted for using Microsoft fonts.

As part of implementing TTF support, Microsoft could change the EULA.

(And would using EOT really not violate the EULA? Can you point me to
the 
EULA in question? I don't recall ever reading any EULA that granted me 
redistribution rights for Microsoft fonts, even redistribution rights 
limited to DRMed, site-locked derivative versions, and I tend to read 
any EULA I agree to.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 23:27:31 UTC