From: dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu
Subject: Re: Debasing other people's designs (Was: help make fonts for GNU)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
Date: 13 Sep 92 23:45:59 PDT

In article <PCG.92Sep11211443@aberdb.aber.ac.uk>, pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
> On 10 Sep 92 15:19:41 GMT, Damian.Cugley@comlab.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) said:
 
> Cugley> <KARL.92Sep9230712@ra.cs.umb.edu> karl@cs.umb.edu (Karl Berry):
 
> Cugley> Beware that many people draw a distinction between giving away
> Cugley> their own ideas and giving away someone else's without their
> Cugley> knowledge.
 
> If those ideas belong to anybody. But many works of intellect, includign
> typefaces, mere lists, obvious ideas, mental processes, and so on, don't
> belong to anybody, not even to their authors, and it is perfectly fair
> to make use of them.
 
> Cugley> The "strong free software position" is that it is
> Cugley> wrong to have copyright any idea or experssion of an idea.  Many
> Cugley> people will go along with a weaker assertion, which is that free
> Cugley> software should be allowed to exist, and attempts by big
> Cugley> companies to make it impossible to give away programs should be
> Cugley> resisted.  By baldly claiming that it is OK to plagarise
> Cugley> anything you can get away with,
 
> This is not bold at all. Property only exists as it is recognized in the
> law. Anybody asserting property rights to a typeface is exactly on the
> same ground as somebody claiming they own the air you breath. And if you
> breath it, you are not stealing it from their rightful ownership.
 
> Typefaces are public domain. Anybody can make any use of public domain
> materials. Anybody claiming to own public domain materials is just
> acting funny.

The claim that typefaces are public domain is simply not true.
Copyright protection of typefaces exists in Germany, France, and
the United Kingdom (that's right, Mr. Grandi, the very country
from which you are posting). Furthermore, in countries in which
copyright protection is not available (e.g., the United States),
typefaces have been successfully protected using a design patent.
This is a more limited protection, however.
 
> sombody> In any case, the original images are not being distributed as
> sombody> the fonts; and the eventual fonts that are made from them will
> sombody> doubtless be considerably different.
 
> Cugley> What does this mean except that the fonts generated will be
> Cugley> hideous travesties of the original designs?  Isn't this rather
> Cugley> unfair on the original designer?  Imagine if someone wrote a bad
> Cugley> clone of GNU Emacs and marketed it as "Richard Stallman's GNU
> Cugley> Emacs editor" -- you would not like this because RMS's
> Cugley> reputation is being besmirched.  The same applies to
> Cugley> distributing a font claiming to be Herman Zapf's Palatino which
> Cugley> is an ugly caricature of the original.
 
> You are really assuming too much here. Many font names are trademarked;
> surely the GNU project would not use improperly valid trademarks, and
> you implying otherwise is besmirching the GNU project, not just
> potentially, but actually, here and now.
 
> If the GNU font project will outline certain typefaces, I am quite sure
> they will use new names for them, just as most commercial foundries do
> the same (and thus dozens of variations on the theme, e.g. Swiss and
> Dutch).

All of which while obeying the letter of the law is still not
necessarily right. I'm sure that there isn't a single person
reading this who couldn't come up with an example of something
which they consider morally wrong which is legal or something
which is illegal which they do not consider morally wrong.
 
Gnu's reputation is far more likely to be besmirched by their
probable production of low-quality typefaces (oh never mind, I
keep forgetting, most people can't tell the difference anymore
anyway). Perhaps that's all that they deserve.

-dh

Don Hosek                  
dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu  
Quixote Digital Typography 
714-621-1291


Newsgroups: comp.fonts