RE: Webfont compression

Richard,

Just to make everything crystal clear for you:

1. Monotype has invested significant resources in development of MTX
compression technology. It is available for licensing by any interested
party (and has been available for years) but we have been under no
obligation to license it for free!

2. In 2008, Microsoft and Monotype Imaging made a joint submission of
EOT technology to W3C [1]. At that time, the company agreed to comply
with the W3C patent policy [2] and to offer royalty-free license for any
portion of the submitted technology that is subsequently incorporated in
a W3C recommendation.

3. W3C patent policy has a provision known as "field of use restriction"
(item 3) that allows patent license be limited to implementation of the
W3C Recommendation. Mozilla claimed that this provision is incompatible
with the GPL license, which is one of the licenses used to distribute
the Firefox source code.

4. In order to facilitate the development of W3C web font solution and
the adoption of the MTX compression technology Monotype has made a
voluntary commitment _not_ to exercise our rights to impose "field of
use restriction" and to offer unrestricted royalty-free license, but
still only "for any portion of the Submission that is subsequently
incorporated in a W3C Recommendation".

5. For MTX compression (or any part of it) to be incorporated in a W3C
recommendation, a working group needs to be formed with the charter to
develop such a Recommendation. Until now, all attempts to form the Fonts
Working Group have been blocked by Mozilla and Opera. Our offer to
provide unrestricted royalty-free patent license remains on the table
and is unequivocal but it does require browser vendors to
- agree to set up Fonts WG for the purposes of developing W3C web font
solution, and
- to reach a consensus on the technology in question.

6. Licensing fonts for use with EOT technology is a completely separate
issue from patent licensing to implement EOT support. In other words,
implementing EOT either as part of a browser or in EOT creation tool
does require a patent license; web authors who wish to use EOT do not
need any patent license and only need to license fonts.

Vladimir

[1] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/01/
[2]
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Requirements



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Fink [mailto:rfink@readableweb.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 11:38 PM
> To: Levantovsky, Vladimir; 'Chris Fynn'; www-font@w3.org
> Cc: 'karsten luecke'
> Subject: RE: Webfont compression
> 
> Thursday, July 23, 2009 Vladimir Levantovsky
> <Vladimir.levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com>
> 
> >The offer is unequivocal, and is contingent only on the adoption of
> the
> technology as
> >part of a web font solution (any solution, whether EOT or its
> derivative,
> or any future webfont solution).
> 
> OK. So there is an IF. It is CONTINGENT. Only IF it's a part of a web
> font
> solution. Otherwise, you're not going to do it.
> Glad we got to the bottom of it.
> But you know, you almost confused me again.
> Let's transpose the sentences and rewrite it like this, so we're
clear:
> 
> "Contingent only on the adoption of the technology as part of a web
> font
> solution - any solution, whether EOT or its derivative, or any future
> webfont solution - I made a promise on this list on behalf of Monotype
> Imaging to offer unrestricted, GPL-compatible, royalty-free license
for
> MTX
> compression technology and the use of patents associated with it. The
> offer
> is unequivocal."
> 
> Don't mean to bust your chops, Vlad, but the way things are going on
> this
> list, I'm finding it hard to concentrate because my BS detector keeps
> going
> off.
> I guess it's gzip or nothin' for the moment. Although I am still
> waiting to
> hear back from Bill Davis of Ascender on the question of licensing
> fonts
> using the old EOT, with rootstrings and MTX compression.
> An option I have always been led to believe, is royalty-free.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> rich
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of
> Levantovsky, Vladimir
> Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 10:58 PM
> To: rfink@readableweb.com; Chris Fynn; www-font@w3.org
> Cc: karsten luecke
> Subject: RE: Webfont compression
> 
> Rich,
> 
> I am not sure what Typophile discussion you are referring to - I've
> never danced around any commitments that I make.
> 
> I made a promise on this list on behalf of Monotype Imaging to offer
> unrestricted, GPL-compatible, royalty-free license for MTX compression
> technology and the use of patents associated with it. The offer is
> unequivocal, and is contingent only on the adoption of the technology
> as
> part of a web font solution (any solution, whether EOT or its
> derivative, or any future webfont solution).
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2009Jun/0228.html
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2009Jun/0321.html
> 
> Bringing MTX to the public domain requires spending money and
> resources.
> It is doable, but for this to happen I really need to hear that the
> technology is going to be part of a future solution. The MTX
> specification and source code is publicly available as part of EOT
> submission [1], and, like I said earlier, Monotype is willing to work
> with any interested party to make our IP available for the purpose of
> developing, prototyping or implementing a future W3C Recommendation.
> 
> So far, I've only heard a healthy criticism and none of the browser
> vendors expressed any interest in supporting MTX (EOT-Lite solution
> does
> not require MTX support). And, if no one wants the MTX technology,
> giving it away to public domain for no particular good reason and
> spending time and money doing it wouldn't be justified (according to
> your own admissions). We do have shareholders we need to answer to.
> 
> Regards,
> Vladimir
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/SUBM-MTX-20080305/
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Richard Fink [mailto:rfink@readableweb.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 11:30 AM
> > To: Levantovsky, Vladimir; 'Chris Fynn'; www-font@w3.org
> > Cc: 'karsten luecke'
> > Subject: RE: Webfont compression
> >
> > Thursday, July 23, 2009 Vladimir Levantofsky
> > <Vladimir.levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com>:
> >
> > Vlad,
> >
> > I questioned Dave DeWitt at the TypeCon 2009 Web Fonts panel about
> > Monotype's pledge to take MTX public domain or a functional
> equivalent.
> > Dave
> > could not commit firmly. Can you?
> > We've done a dance around this on typophile.com and still I sense
> > hedging,
> > bobbing, and weaving.
> > "We'll make it open, IF..." is what I'm still hearing. What's the
IF?
> > Is
> > there an IF or are you just going to do it?
> > Enough already. There's plenty of reason to just do it so that it
can
> > be put
> > back into the new EOT.
> > It would also be seen as a gesture of goodwill by all concerned. At
> > least,
> > I'd play it up that way.
> >
> > Unequivocally, what's the deal, Vlad?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > rich
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On
> > Behalf Of
> > Levantovsky, Vladimir
> > Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 10:46 AM
> > To: Chris Fynn; www-font@w3.org
> > Cc: karsten luecke
> > Subject: RE: Webfont compression
> >
> > On Tuesday, July 21, 2009 3:59 PM John Daggett wrote:
> > >
> > > Any of the solutions that have been proposed (webfont, EOT-Lite,
> ZOT)
> > > are relatively easy to implement, assuming no DRMish features are
> > involved.
> > >
> >
> > On Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:41 AM Chris Fynn wrote:
> > >
> > > In this case, the so-called "interoperability" seems to be just a
> > > pragmatic way of delivering a working cross-platform @font-face
> > > solution to as many users as possible within the shortest possible
> > time.
> > >
> >
> > On Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:12 AM Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> > >
> > > It so happens that EOT Lite was stumbled upon as a format
> > > that is supported by all currently relevant versions of IE, and is
> > > fairly uncontroversial.
> > >
> > > The fact that we can make web fonts work in IE6 without any of the
> > > more distasteful baggage of the EOT format is a glorious
> coincidence
> > > that we would be remiss in not taking advantage of, for the sake
of
> > us
> > > authors who just want to use pretty fonts yesterday.
> > >
> > > After that gets standardized, go crazy making a simpler format.
> The
> > > basic work will have been completed, and the urgent need to do
> > > something, *anything*, will no longer be present.  You can spend
> time
> > > gathering opinions and debating technical points then.
> > >
> >
> > Indeed, this says it all!
> >
> > As a result of the long and productive discussions we "stumbled
upon"
> > EOT-Lite solution that can be easily implemented and allows
> delivering
> > a
> > working cross-platform @font-face support to as many users as
> possible,
> > and in the shortest time possible. And because EOT-Lite is also
> > supported by font vendors, it does mean that authors will have an
> > opportunity to use custom fonts starting "yesterday", for the
> benefits
> > of billions of web users around the globe.
> >
> > Once we satisfied the urge to have a working @font-face solution, we
> > can
> > make a stub at developing a new  solution. Isn't it the way how the
> > whole web has emerged - delivering a quick solution that works and
> > refining it later? Support for legacy implementations has never
> stopped
> > the technical progress, and I am sure that as soon as we deliver
> > working
> > cross-platform support for @font-face today, we will be better
> prepared
> > to introduce a new, better solution that will become the de-facto
> > standard 5 years from now.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Vladimir
> >
>

Received on Friday, 24 July 2009 05:16:03 UTC