Respond to Ribbit's critique

Hi Dave,

I'm writing this about the section of your thesis entitled 'Should Typeface Designs be Free?' It's an attempt to understand and deconstruct the thinking (or not thinking lol) that led you to the assertion at the end of the section (on page 29) that 'for these reasons, typeface designs ought to be free as part of a free culture in a free society'. This week has been pretty busy and I’ve written this in a bit of a rush so apologies in advance if I’ve misunderstood, misread or ignored anything you wrote - you’re of course welcome to correct me :)

Your argument rests on the Trichotomy devised by Richard Stallman (an activist with no legal training) that differentiates ‘copyrighted [digital] works into three discrete categories, based on a work’s purpose for its users: to function, to witness, and to entertain’.

For anyone else reading, I’ll include your definitions for this here (they’re examples not definitions, but it’s all you give us):

Works that are practical and functional: Software programs and corresponding manuals, culinary recipes, reference works such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks and species taxonomies, geographic maps, educational material, designs of equipment and buildings.

Works that witness the thoughts of certain parties: Essays, scientiﬁc papers, political manifestos, personal diaries and memoirs.

Works that are artistic, aesthetic, or entertainment: Novels, theatrical scripts, music, cinema, television drama, paintings, [sic]

You then tell us that your friend Stallman has said “ the general public should always be able to non-commercially redistribute works verbatim; that functional works should always be commercially redistributable and modiﬁable; that witnessing works should not be modiﬁable; and that artworks should only be restricted in their commercial use, redistribution and modiﬁcation for a short period of 10 years”.

You then use a lot of words to show that typefaces should be considered as functional, the first of these categories, and therefore following Stallman’s edict quoted in the paragraph above, “ought to be free”.

Off the top of my head I can think of lots of digital human artefacts that don’t fit into only one of Stallman’s three categories; a historical diary, poem or series of correspondences; a newspaper article about a recipe; a song or thinkpiece about a current event; an ebook reissue of a corporate graphic design design manual.

And to explain that more clearly, let’s use the example of the digital reissue of Vignelli’s New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standard Manual. It is practical and functional in that it provides a set of instructions as to how to implement the New York City Transit Authority’s visual branding. It also witnesses, in that it explains Vignelli’s ideas regarding the company’s brand, and his own personal philosophy of graphic design to readers, and it entertains in that contemporary graphic designers enjoy reading this publication in their leisure time so they can admire the beauty and rigour of the page layouts it contains.

And another example we could consider; a plan for Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. The plan is functional in that it provides instructions for how to replicate a building, it witnesses thoughts in that trained viewers can admire its manifestation of Mies’ very carefully considered philosophy of design, and it entertains in that certain architects might think it so beautiful that they decide to hang the plan on their wall.

This is further complicated by digital files with physical potential. How do we categorise an indesign file that contains the layout and contents of a book? A scale 3D model of an Alessi Juicer or Breuer’s Wassily chair? An architectural rendering? These digital files are functional in that they prescribe instructions for the creation of a physical object, yet are clearly not functional in the same way when I put renders of them into a duotone risograph printed zine. And they become art when I put the replica Alessi Juicer and the Wassily chair that I made using my 3D models into the Design Museum.

Those are just a few of the enormous range of cultural artefacts whose categorisation under this system is completely untenable. In fact most cultural artefacts are impossible to categorise here with any certainty at all. Not to be sassy but Stallman’s trichotomy is clearly the work of a programmer, not someone who loves or has studied the broader creative arts, and understands the utility and documentary functions they can provide. Your unquestioning adoption of it also shows that you’re basically a tech guy, not someone who really understands beauty, which is confirmed by your position (lol).

And of course once this system of categorisation breaks down, your (highly questionable) proof that typefaces are functional doesn’t therefore imply that typefaces should be free.

Beyond this, from what I can gather, your justification also rests on a sort of ‘Stallman said this so it should be how things are done’ logic. You provide no justification as to why, legally or morally, Stallman’s assertion that ‘the general public should always be able to non-commercially redistribute works verbatim’ is a good or widely applicable idea. The argument that should be the central focus of this entire document is so paper thin as to barely exist.

I’m sort of amazed that you’ve been able to distribute this admittedly well written and detailed, though terribly reasoned document that basically recounts the history of open source and typography, and somehow used it to convince people that open source fonts are ethically or legally justifiable. I guess very few of them probably ever bother to read it. You’re clearly way too deep into the subject to be able to subject your own impulses to a reasoned ethical analysis.

This is then followed by a chapter called ‘Should Font Software be Free?’, which gives a lot of technical information about font file formats but nowhere even attempts a justification of why font software should be free! Why didn’t you just change the chapter name to ‘About Font Software’? Any reader should have a look through it (chapter 7, p30) and decide for themselves if it contains any engagement with the titular question.

Anyway, hopefully I’ve made it abundantly clear that a moral or legal discussion or argument about whether fonts should be free, that should be the central premise of your thesis, is completely non-existent in this document, and that this document in no way justifies your distribution of open source fonts.

I’m all ears if you have a meaningful argument to make here - please send over some more stuff for me to read, and in the next few weeks I’ll write another longer piece to try to explain my thoughts as to why fonts SHOULDN’T be open source.

Best,

Ribbit

davelab6 / matd-dissertation

Respond to Ribbit's critique #36