Re: Fonts from the former fonts.openlilylib.org

[Carl Sorensen]

On 3/26/16 5:09 PM, "Stephen MacNeil" <address@hidden> wrote:

>I don't think I read any where that Abraham was making the fonts
>"proprietary" .. I do believe he said "Some fonts are becoming
>commercial". And proprietary doesn't necessarily mean closed source.
>Although in most cases it does, because proprietary software if modified
>holds ownership "usually" with the owner. As for commercial software it
>can be licensed many ways. It's main goal is sometimes revenue. As I
>suspect it will be with Abraham.
>
>Commercial software can still be free software. GNU is not against making
>money.. it's about free software

Yes, and there are four freedoms in free software:
0: The freedom to use it as you wish. -- I'd be shocked if Abraham's new
commercial fonts don't support this freedom.
1: The freedom to study how it works and change it so id does computing as
you wish.  -- I think that with fonts you are always free to study.  I'm
less sure about changing.
2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. --
Abraham has implied that the new fonts will not come with this freedom,
and has asked users to voluntarily not exercise this freedom with the old
fonts.  Certainly there is a clash between Abraham's desires to
commercialize his work and the use of this freedom with the old fonts.
3: The freedom distribute copies of your modified versions to others.  --
I have seen no evidence that some are trying to exercise this freedom with
the old fonts.  Certainly the old fonts are based in part on having this
freedom for Emmentaler.  According to Abraham, one of the major changes in
the new fonts is eliminating any connection to Emmentaler, which is
necessary for his commercialization plans because Emmentaler is licensed
under GNU GPL which requires any derivative works to also be free (as in
speech) software, granting the four freedoms.

You can see RMS talking about it at TEDxGeneva:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM

I do not agree with RMS when he talks about exploitation, and about the
evil intent of those who create proprietary software.  In particular, I
don't claim that Abraham is trying to anything bad in commercializing his
fonts.


>From Abraham's actions (taking down fonts.openlilylib.org and asking
people not to exercise freedom 2) I infer that his commercial model will
no longer support the four freedoms.  Hence I referred to his commercial
fonts as "proprietary".  I admit that this is *my* designation, not his.
But I was specifically trying to draw the distinction between free as in
beer and free as in speech.

I have no claims to Abraham's work on his commercial fonts, and I don't
plan to make any.  But the old fonts are free software, and I believe that
they should continue to be available to users who have depended upon them
in the past.

Thanks,

Carl