- From: John Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:54:22 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Christopher Slye <cslye@adobe.com>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
> First, it's about more than trusting our customers. If we allow
> customers to post fonts on a server, free and clear, we must then
> trust everyone on the web. I'm sure nobody here thinks that everyone
> on the web is trustworthy (i.e. doesn't steal). Foundries need some
> simple barriers ("fences" is a good figure of speech) to convey what
> is free and what is not. For many foundries, their sole source of
> revenue is fonts. Some users are asking them to allow anyone to post
> their product on a server where anyone can take and use them. That is
> simply not realistic for most foundries.
It seems to me you're presupposing the fences you describe must be in
the font data itself. Foundries would have a lot more control over the
construction of these fences if they control the server hosting the font
data; all sorts of schemes exist for server-regulated access to content.
None are failsafe or "secure" but they do cover most of the actual use
cases for obfuscated font formats, namely the casual user trying to
download fonts to use in desktop applications. Typekit is just one
example of this sort of service.
Cheers,
John
Received on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 02:54:59 UTC