Re: [css3-webfonts] Proposal-in-progress for cross site font sharing [was "Downloaded fonts should not..."]

Dave Crossland wrote:
> On 18/04/2008, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:
>> most freeware fonts are convertible to EOT, using WEFT.
> 
> This is incorrect: Most freeware fonts allow exact duplication only;
> format conversion is not allowed.

Although what you can do with a particular font will depend on the exact 
wording of the licence, and your ability to negotiate with the author, 
my understanding is that EOT is basically a wrapper around Type 1 and 
True Type fonts, so, for those font formats, using WEFT doesn't 
represent a format conversion in the sense that converting from TrueType 
to Type 1 would.  It retains the integrity of the font design.

On the other hand, simply printing a document will often involve 
subsetting and/or conversion to type 1.  (For expensive commercial 
fonts, one would be required to load the font onto the printer, 
independently of the document, and would, typically, need to have a Type 
1 version of the font, to do that.)

One could consider that even wrapping in HTTP was a format conversion, 
and it seems to me that one reason why a supplier of a free of charge 
font might want it only to distributed in the exact original file might 
be to ensure that anyone rendering with the font knew they were using 
the font and where it came from (shades of the application server debate 
with open source software).

> 
> I'm curious why you think the only motivation in life is direct
> monetary compensation?

I'm not talking about font distribution as the result of asking the 
question "How do I make money from people" (which is how too many 
products start today), but as something that might be good for the 
world, but requires the sort of money that requires you to be a rich 
patron of the arts if you aren't going to have to find some way of 
funding it from other people.  I'm suggesting that the mechanisms that 
might otherwise allow funding to come from other than the author and 
font designer may not work in this context.  (Deep linking is normally 
allowed because it serves content that serves the aim of the site, 
either directly, or by increasing footfall.)


-- 
David Woolley
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Received on Monday, 21 April 2008 07:08:03 UTC