- From: Patrick Garies <pgaries@fastmail.us>
- Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:36:12 -0500
- To: "Levantovsky, Vladimir" <Vladimir.Levantovsky@MonotypeImaging.com>
- CC: www-style@w3.org
Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote: > Commercial font vendors DO want to be able to license their fonts for > the web use. However, allowing raw TrueType and OpenType fonts be > used with no protection whatsoever presents too much risk that font > vendors and foundries are not willing to take. The problem can easily > be solved by deploying a font wrapper like EOT that simply reduces > the risk of font piracy. Based on a comment in the Ascender proposal page: Zack Weinberg wrote: > From Mozilla's point of view, the use of patented technology in EOT > is a show-stopper. We cannot make use of any technology which is > (known to be) covered by (actively enforced) patents that are not > licensed under terms compatible with the GPL. We have expressed this > requirement to the EOT patent holders, but they refuse to publish > even a proposal for license terms, saying only that /if/ the W3C > adopts EOT as a standard, then they will issue a license compatible > with the W3C's patent policy. Unfortunately, W3C-policy compliant > patent licenses can still be incompatible with the GPL, so that's not > good enough for us. Zack Weinberg wrote: > I don't speak for the entire company, nor even the team whose call it > would be ultimately, but my understanding is that if the patent > issue were resolved we would consider EOT support quite seriously. As > long as the patent issue is live, though, we are not interested even > in bothering to figure out whether we have any other objections. > It's that much of a deal-breaker for us. According to the Ascender proposal itself, your company owns this patent: > The compression uses patented Agfa (now Monotype Imaging) technology. Do y'all have any intention of addressing this problem? — Patrick Garies
Received on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 07:37:04 UTC