Create a Nonprofit Organization

[graphicore]

Which acts like a shepherd for the commons. This would be able do fundraising also from public partners. Then spend it for infrastructure, maintenance of OFL licensed stuff and fostering the ecosystem and network etc.

In many scripts, having fonts at all is an infrastructure problem, there's no commercial market where you can just buy licenses for fonts.

The role of a company (e.g. #11), would rather be to interface with private partners.

Please add ideas and refinements to this concept …

[davelab6]

Why not let sfconservancy do this for you?

[graphicore]

Why not let sfconservancy do this for you?

I'm down if it does the job. Personally, I don't have to reinvent existing FLOSS infrastructure.

As context for the future reader: this came up in a group call that we had today.

[signalwerk]

I like the idea of a shepherd. I would also love if some sheep would find a home. Since there are so many excellent libre/open fonts and nobody is looking after them. If a perfect libre font is not maintained, its cultural value in a longterm thinking will not live on. Requirements in use and technology will change. I would see that shepard not only as a way to get money but as a organisation who's also helping with infrastructure and holding the project so authors can pass their project to it (under certain criteria). The fonts get an authority who's present and people know where to report problems and can get involved. More like what The Apache Software Foundation is to software.

[davelab6]

Outside of the libre software non profits there are also many typography non profits.

SOTA is the non profit that mainly is running typecon, and Atypi is also a USA non-profit. Both have board members who have made libre fonts.

Tug is an obvious hybrid, and if one of the jobs was to maintain libre fonts packaging and downstream releasing in ctan, it would be a clear fit. I have a good connection to tug and they support crafting type.

K8 in Germany is now being the legal entity that runs libre graphics meeting.

[signalwerk]

@davelab6 Tug? The TeX people? Well that sounds interesting. I thought they have their main focus on Metafont. Would be awesome to discuss couple Ideas with them at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Saarbruecken. Since K8 will also be there. Do you know someone we could reach out and point to that event. You will be there as well right? @graphicore you?

[pathumego]

Tug is an obvious hybrid, and if one of the jobs was to maintain libre fonts packaging and downstream releasing in ctan, it would be a clear fit. I have a good connection to tug and they support crafting type.

@signalwerk Yes its the TeX User Group. And the Libre Font Fund

[davelab6]

I am not sure but I believe that Lasse, Eli and I will be there. I believe Chris and Pathum will not. Not sure about others.

[graphicore]

I'll be there for sure.

[pathumego]

A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards herds of sheep.

So we are looking at a org which dose the following for FLOSS fonts; maintenance and updates, bugfixes, protect rights of the authors and enable development of more FLOSS fonts.

I like the idea of a shepherd. I would also love if some sheep would find a home. Since there are so many excellent libre/open fonts and nobody is looking after them. If a perfect libre font is not maintained, its cultural value in a longterm thinking will not live on. Requirements in use and technology will change. I would see that shepard not only as a way to get money but as a organisation who's also helping with infrastructure and holding the project so authors can pass their project to it (under certain criteria). The fonts get an authority who's present and people know where to report problems and can get involved. More like what The Apache Software Foundation is to software.

@signalwerk Yes! I agree. I think a directory of curated and well maintained fonts is a start, with secondary steps to share a common infrastructure and distribution mechanism.

There are initiatives maintaining a lot of font projects (and typography tools) already with varying degrees of funding and commitments. A common technical and orgnisational infrastructure can solve a lot of shared issues across these orgnisations and projects. We need a system to bring enough people who make OFL fonts together on one side and people who use those fonts on the other side to contribute—financially and labour—to make a such effort.

Then there are projects aggregating FLOSS and freeware fonts, but the distribution is fragmented and there is no connection to sources or the authors. For FLOSS fonts a lot of projects are using the Google Fonts collection from git repos or API. (Homebrew fonts, typefaces for npm) There has been efforts to curate [excellent] FLOSS fonts, take a look at https://open-foundry.com.

I would like to propose the idea of building a central directory of curated and well maintained FLOSS fonts (sharing common infrastructure and distribution mechanism). For me this could look very similar to the ecosystems around package registry and package managers in many aspects including; technical implementation and tools, project organisational structure, funding mechanisms, businesses models. While The Apache Software Foundation is a good example they, do host a bunch of very different projects with varying focus groups, per project.

Tug is an obvious hybrid, and if one of the jobs was to maintain libre fonts packaging and downstream releasing in ctan, it would be a clear fit.

ctan would be just one channels. With the direction that fontmake and fontbakery is heading I think we can eventually package for and support a bunch of 'downstream channels'. deb, npm and et al of web development tools, for Wordpress with packagist and others. The technical implementation of this ecosystem is up for discussion. I am fascinated with cpan and tools around it. Obviously the organisation model should be decentralised and much as possible.

I think there will be three font catalogs made from this library or directory of FLOSS font packages.

a. All the FLOSS fonts (FL library) b. The Basic catalog: A curated collection of fonts ready for production with a roadmap for development. c. The 'pro' catalog, a for profit service or subscription.

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How do we fund this effort and continuous development?

These packaging projects seems to sustain with some sort of a funding model.

1. Composer and Packagist (PHP packages): the Packagist has the public registry and the Private Packagist which is available for a subscription fee.

2. npm Inc maintains the free registry and has a number of paid products around the packages. It is not a for-profit company.

3. PSF PackagingWG The budget shows that the PSF grants and donations are the main source of funding. pypi has a bunch of sponsors and this nice dashboard

The non-profit organisation doing the work could approach orgs using the downstream packages in and offer a way to contribute back, in form of donations, grants and sponsorships. Tooling and workflow development is also a form of contribution. There might be public funds that we can tap into. EU is funding a bug hunting grant on a bunch of FLOSS projects this year! and there instances of public funds used for font development. (ie: PT Fonts) If we provide the infrastructure, tools and knowledge, this funding could be secured through local and regional teams.

For orgs and companies monetizing and using the downstream FLOSS font packages in their for-profit products we should offer a way to contribute to the commons, in form of donations or grants. A simple subscription model could work for the downstream users (Tidelift has a super interesting premis for how we could do this.) and there will be custom deals with some commercial entities; commission based on the usage or a one-time payment contribution. With design-in-browser tech advancing fast we have an opportunity to look at licensing our FLOSS catalog (This serviced catalog could be GPL or less permissive license).

Above 'pro' catalog could be managed by the non-profit itself, but it would make more sense to do it though a for-profit initiate with a social purpose and liability to maintain the public catalog.

As a stretch goal for this org we need to look at how we could use the exsisting tech to reward all contributors of a font project in a decentralised manner based on the font usage. (I hear fontcoin ) I was pondering on how BAT-like implementation could be used to assign some value to webfont viewing :)

In many scripts, having fonts at all is an infrastructure problem, there's no commercial market where you can just buy licenses for fonts.

Exactly!, it is important to note that this is this not a population issue. It is a market capability issue—one that might presist regardless of all the digital services aiming local markets— and the lack of respect for proprietary, or any form of licensing :)

There are bunch of technocratic and non-technocratic organisations and initiatives developing and maintaining fonts for these markets with lesser commercial viability.

Take a look at SMC developing Malayalam fonts Georgian Web-Fonts Catalogue [ICTA Sinhala Fonts Catalogue] (https://www.language.lk/en/download/unicode-fonts) Google funded Mukta project by EkType is being used by many government orgs and companies and our Abhaya Libre Sinhala is the de-facto Sinhala font for anything in Sinhala Script.

Almost all novels, books, newspapers, academic texts and Buddhist scripture are being printed with these fonts. Here is an older draft proposal for a project here in SL. I have a new proposal based on the feedback I received . Will share here when it is public.

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A packaging and distribution ecosystem(Font Package Registry) means collaboration on the infrastructure (technical, financial and knowledge) regardless of the contents (what the fonts are for and how they are developed and funding availability to maintain) This is for the font supply side. The project could bring many different projects together to aggregate metadata on fonts (See https://coverartarchive.org/)

The pro catalog curation process will consider what the fonts are for, how they are developed and funding availability to maintain. Package registries and ecosystems have existing models for technical implementation, financial management and funding and knowledge exchange that can can try out and iterate.

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There are lot of components needed lying around to build this infrastructure. The Fontpackage project is aiming to do this. However, my preference is to adopt I fontlibrary.org for the project if possible.

[pathumego]

I am not sure but I believe that Lasse, Eli and I will be there. I believe Chris and Pathum will not. Not sure about others.

Sadly I will not be there for LGM 2019. But, will be online to watching the space for sure. We can do a virtual conf on this :)