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antijingoist / open-dyslexic

What I intend to be an opensource font for dyslexics and for high readability
http://dyslexicfonts.com
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License #8

Closed raphaelbastide closed 11 years ago

raphaelbastide commented 11 years ago

Is there any reson you didn't chose SIL Open Font License for your project? I am just curious.

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

There's a long story and a short one. I'll tell you the short one & if you want the slightly longer version I can share it after work :D: OpenDyslexic started out as changes to Bitstream Vera Sans using whatever tools I could find. The bitstream license required I license derivatives as the same license.

There is a Sil-OFL font, Eulexia, that you can find in my repo's list that I've been working on.

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

I really need this license thing to be easy to understand, and allow maximum freedom that I can on a piece of paper. I'm open for suggestions.

anthonybrown commented 11 years ago

who would've known it was such a hassle to give something so useful away? proud of you bro!

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

Thanks! :D

It is a hassle! And US copyright laws are difficult to get my head around for propagation, etc. I get emails daily now from IT departments asking if I'm okay with them deploying this across their organizations. I need a way to communicate that... well, my thinking on this is kinda... anarchistic? o_O

anthonybrown commented 11 years ago

lol I personally I love this font, so glad it's doing well; and such a great idea for people that are dyslexic

sethwoodworth commented 11 years ago

That is a hard problem. The creative commons folks ended up creating a human-parsable version of their licenses. And even then there is still a lot of confusion.

I would be down to help break down the license into things people can do with the license, can do with some restriction and things they can't do. Examples like the one you mention (can an IT department deploy the font on all of their machines for free) would also make a good FAQ.

sethwoodworth commented 11 years ago

There is one cavet: If you wanna sell a book made using this font, go right ahead. If you wanna make banners and flyers for your business, go for it! Wanna use it on your website? Thats great! The only way you'll make me unhappy is if you charge others for the font itself. That is all.

Is probably the part that causes confusion. You might be able to reach the same goal (assuming your goal is avoiding exploitation, in someone selling a free font) by other means. The CC-by license alone states that derivative versions of a work must clearly state the original authorship and has some wording about the manner of attribution. If you make it clear that the work must clearly be stated as CC-by and authored by you, and available for free, that might reach the same goals. The current wording make me unhappy isn't a clear legal statement. It's really hard to make clear statements about non-commercial and pseudo-non-commercial licenses.

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

Gotcha. Makes sense. I was trying to avoid support requests like "I downloaded this font and the installer came with a virus." (already got those) or, "you sold me this font for $600 thats not fair"

But, I guess in the end there isn't anything I can do about that except educate people. It's not like I'd have the resources to enforce the paper.

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

Removed the offending text. Thoughts on removing the CC too? And is there any "abiding by the rules" way to remove Bitstream & replace w/ SIL?

sethwoodworth commented 11 years ago

That is awesome. I think it will help. I think the debian folks have been trying to s/Bitstream/SIL/g for a while (I might b e remembering that wrong, don't quote me on it). But I will poke folks who know more than me :-)

Keep up the good work!

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

Talking to the folks at bitstream. Doesn't look like I can. :(

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

@sethwoodworth @raphaelbastide any thoughts on redoing the shapes from scratch just to get rid of the Bitstream license?

As a side note: I've added "copying is love" to the license. :)

raphaelbastide commented 11 years ago

Well I think this is not just about shapes but spacing and metrics. It will remain a fork of Bitstream Vera Sans and I am not sure you can do anything about it :—/

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

Spacing and metrics haven't been the same since the longest. o_O -- Abelardo Gonzalez-- admin@abbiecod.es-- http://abbiecod.es Sent from my HP Pre3 — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

sethwoodworth commented 11 years ago

I don't know how much work it would be to completely rebase the project on another font stack. But the bitstream license is a big thorn in the side of the debian folks. If you think you have the time to do the rebase, it might be worth it.

antijingoist commented 11 years ago

I can do the shapes from scratch, and I'd put the time into it as long as I can be sure I'm 'clean' once it's done.