From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Debasing other people's designs (Was: help make fonts for GNU)
Date: 11 Sep 92 21:14:43 GMT
	<1992Sep3.231403.1@linus.claremont.edu>
	<KARL.92Sep9230712@ra.cs.umb.edu>
	<DAMIAN.CUGLEY.92Sep10161941@pierrot.comlab>
Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth

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.

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).

Cugley> (I guess is that you could argue that you have to have fonts
Cugley> called Palatino-Roman and the like because so many PS documents
Cugley> assume that the `standard 35' are always present.

While font and typeface names can be trademarked, this does not prevent
people from writing strings and variable names having the same sequence
of letters. Or otherwise your could not call your machine 'sun4' or your
printer spool queue 'apple-ntx' if you so fancied.

Trademarks are enforceable only in a 'trade' situation, in that you
cannot offer a product within the same industry with a name that makes
it easy to confuse it with another product. Otherwise you can easily
call your dog 'IBM' if you so fancy.

Cugley> I think GS would be better off if a general font-substitution
Cugley> mechanism were put in place

It sort of has one, actually. It will use the hershey fonts if a given
font cannot be found (or was this a proprty of earlier releases?), as
you suggest:

Cugley> -- where when presented with a request for a font it doesn't
Cugley> have, another in as similar a style as possible is substituted
Cugley> (some munging of metrics might be involved).
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | JNET: pcg@uk.ac.aber
Dept of CS, University of Wales    | UUCP: ...!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@aber.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.fonts