Re: Minutes, 16 February 2011 WebFonts WG telcon

Hi,

(The opinions expressed here at my personal opinions and not those of
any other party I may be associated with.)

On 19 February 2011 23:09, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
> doesn't the From-Origin proposal at
> least suggest that the web wants to be inconsistent with the default often
> enough that we want a well-defined mechanism to allow it ? Once this feature
> is supported across browsers, what prevents sites from setting From-Origin:same
> on everything they serve ? Opera's proposal gives the web the means to turn off
> this consistency at will. Not just for fonts; for everything. Compared to this,
> I'm not sure why the default for @font-face is so worrisome.

"The web wants to be inconsistent with the default [state]" is
illogical statement, since a default is not a consistent state but
merely an initial one that can by definition change. The web wants to
change the state of SOR often enough that we want a well-defined
mechanism to allow that, and that mechanism is FO. If a site wants to
set FO:same for everything, that's cool!

But defaults are a very different issue, and so I understand why the
default for @font-face is so worrisome.

Nomen est omen, and _the web_ has an interlinking spiders-web nature
at its core, which is teased undone by default same origin
restriction. But the ability to cut yourself off from society is a
right worth respecting deeply.

So I expect FO to be an uncontroversial and quick W3C REC, because
Referrer: checking sucks and supporting FO for SOR for all resources
types not just font formats will help make the web a better place. I
hope FO will not need the help of the resources available to this WG
and that it will happen fine by itself! :-)

If WOFF comes out with FO before FO is ready, we'll see if font
publishers are really gating on SOR or not. I expect only a few will
hold out, proving that it is not that important, really, to most of
them, but it is worth having instead of not having, which seems to be
the unspoken alternative.

I suspect proprietary font vendors will still sell WOFF files without
SOR at all if push comes to shove. However, appeasement seems like the
gentlemanly thing; the WOFF charter _was_ approved with mention of
SOR, and so if the WOFF Recommendation mentions FO and says nothing
about CORS, that sounds good to me, and if it says nothing about FO or
CORS, its not meeting its charter to deal with SOR.

On 19 February 2011 21:38, John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com> wrote:
>
> The libre font enthusiasts should go talk to some of the shareware
> font developers of 1995.

Shareware font businesses seem to be doing exceptionally well lately.
I wonder if web font distribution without origin-restricting licences
had anything to do with that... ;-)

My level of confidence in the assertion that today's popular forms of
proprietary font licenses will be the common case in 2021 is highly
correlated with the chance of me being hit by a bus. The proprietary
font enthusiasts should not count chickens before they are hatched.
"Humanity's greatest danger is our inability to understand the
exponential function." - Albert Bartlett

Cheers
Daveh

Received on Sunday, 20 February 2011 06:19:22 UTC