RE: A way forward

If they're not, then EOT-Lite isn't very useful, since serving non-free fonts to IE users (its great advantage) will require burdensome and fragile Referer checking.

Yup. Whether that’s so burdensome it’s worth designing a new format should not, however, be up to a tiny group of browser vendor representatives. I’d like authors to voice their opinion. I am also asking Ascender to clarify their licensing policy.