Open-source typefaces

[Member Chr…]

Nice catch. I didn’t have time to read that in full today.

[Member hra…]

My choice was Fenland*: http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/fenland/

* https://typography.guru/forums/topic/101425-forwarding

hhp

[Member Té…]

Managed to get my inner densha-otaku to give up the notch for long enough that I could do a rough write-up of what's new/updated at CAT Design:

Typeface:    Alpha54
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     2.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Konrad F. Bauer, Walter Baum, Peter Wiegel
Description: Italic brush writing

Typeface:    Beta54
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     2.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Konrad F. Bauer, Walter Baum, Peter Wiegel
Description: Oblique brush serif

Typeface:    Bienchen SAS
Fonts:       2: Rg/RgI
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     0.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: East German school handwriting

Typeface:    Boecklins Universe
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     1.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Multilingual Boecklin.

Typeface:    Deutsche Normalschrift
Fonts:       2: Rg/RgI (Italic is alternates)
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     0.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: First Latin-style schoolhand in Germany

Typeface:    Gotisch Weiss UNZ1A
Fonts:       2: Rg/RgI (Italic is Antiqua caps and alternates)
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     ?
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   ?
Designer:    Emil Rudolf Weiss, Peter Wiegel
Description: Blackletter, Dürer feel.

Typeface:    Imrans School
Fonts:       2: Rg/RgI
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     000.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Latin schoolhand for an NP project in India

Typeface:    Imrans School 2
Fonts:       2: Rg/RgI (Italic is alternates)
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     000.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Latin schoolhand for an NP project in India

Typeface:    Ottilie U1AY
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     1.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   OFL
Designer:    Uwe Naumann, Peter Wiegel
Description: Kurrent handwriting, pen-style

Typeface:    Rastenburg U1SY
Fonts:       6: Rg/Bd, Schraeg(Rg/Bd), Outline(Rg), Band(Rg)
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     0.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Kurrent handwriting, round marker

Typeface:    Rastenburg Band
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     1.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Outlined Rastenburg with minuscules on a black band

Typeface:    Simple Print
Fonts:       1: Rg
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     000.000
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   GPLfx,OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: School block writing

Typeface:    Tartlers End
Fonts:       1: Rg?
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     ?
Format:      VFB
Licensing:   OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Very thin serif, bit of a hippy

[Member hra…]

Still no Apache?

hhp

[Member Té…]

Naw. Weigel prefers dualling the GPL with font exception with the OFL. No idea if he knows of Apache or BSD, or if they even suit his model.

[Member Té…]

Seems that Google is changing UI fonts again, this time to the Noto Sans/Serif bought in from Monotype; and that they're relicensing the ChromeOS Core fonts as Apache, probably to have all of their fonts under the same licence.

[Member chr…]

It would be great if there was a site to publish this list to that was categorized and had a search function.

[Member hra…]

Go Google! Respect.

They might have realized what I recently realized: Apache is more magnanimous, more inclusive, more socially just, more open than something like OFL.

In any case it no longer makes sense to cast Apache as a deprecated has-been.

Related:
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/109972-forwarding
http://www.typophile.com/node/101655

hhp

[Member Té…]

The list is WTFPL'd -- you can do Whatever The F* you want with it.

Edit: The ChromeOS set was Google's only non-Apache-licensed set, if I recall correctly.

[Member hra…]

?
Aren't most Google fonts OFL (or equivalent)?

hhp

[Member Té…]

When I think of Google's Own fonts, I think of those fonts whose copyright Google holds; mainly the Android and ChromeOS fonts.

Aside: Noto looks to me like an updated Droid.

[Member hra…]

Same here, although Matteson says it's a "renaming of Open Sans".

hhp

[Member ver…]

Can someone call Mathew Butterick to the forum please before it's too late? Folks are not using the term 'open source' correctly. Civillisation as we know it could be in peril.

[Member hra…]

The only gray area in my own mind is whether to restrict the term "open-source" to fonts that could have been entirely produced with free* software. From what I can tell this is why some people don't feel Source Sans is open-source. The alternative is to call a font open-source as long as you don't need permission to distribute a modification. So maybe we need a different term for the former: opener-source. :-)

* Or does it have to be open-source too? :-)

hhp

[Member Chr…]

Is this not accurate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

[Member Té…]

Noto Sans does look a good deal like Open Sans, but Noto Serif looks a right big lot like Droid Serif.

Personally, I do not care if others use payware tools or not; as long as I can use and hack on something to my heart's content and give/sell the result to others, I consider that something open source. To me, a TTF/OTF file is tokenised source, such as GWBASIC would normally save.

[Member Kar…]

I doubt that anyone is looking to this thread for a definition of what open source is and is not in the larger world (apologies if you are). At best this serves as a useful discussion of the limiting factors of applying a philosophical model that was never conceived of to address the needs of type designers and font users. The OFL was conceived of to try and address the needs of designers, developers and users that wanted an open model which prevented restrictions, removed some of the ambiguity inherent in applying established licensing models (to something for which they were not intended) and promoted the underlying philosophy, without worrying about commercial considerations.

Perhaps this could lead to another custom license, following the Apache model but focusing on type/fonts? The Typophile Apache Licence (TAL), anyone? : )

[Member hra…]

I can dig that.
So exactly how does the existing Apache model not serve type well?

hhp

[Member Kar…]

So exactly how does the existing Apache model not serve type well?

If you are using it and happy with it then I suppose that it does, but as it is not explicitly designed around type and the ways that type can be used then it is possible that it will fall short in some respect. I suppose that interpretation of section 3. 'Grant of Patent License' is confusing enough that I would not be comfortable taking advantage of it in a commercial capacity unless I was clear on the lineage of the typeface and the contributions made to it, basically, I would want to know where it had been.

[Member Té…]

My inner tetsu-ota found something to bounce all over his padded cell over:

Typeface:    5by7
Fonts:       2: Rg/Bd
Foundry:     CAT Design
Home:        http://peter-wiegel.de/
Version:     ?
Format:      TTF
Licensing:   OFL
Designer:    Peter Wiegel
Description: Proportional matrix L/G/C font based on a 5×7 LED matrix

[Member Té…]

Should anyone care to venture here…
http://googlefontdirectory.googlecode.com/hg/apache/
…there is now a RobotoSlab to be had, both raw and autohinted. The address, by the way, is that of Google's Mercurial repository, Apache division.

[Member ver…]

@Karl Stang

The OFL was conceived of to try and address the needs of designers, developers and users that wanted an open model which prevented restrictions, removed some of the ambiguity inherent in applying established licensing models (to something for which they were not intended) and promoted the underlying philosophy, without worrying about commercial considerations.

Perhaps this could lead to another custom license, following the Apache model but focusing on type/fonts? The Typophile Apache Licence (TAL), anyone? : )

I wonder if the OFL is a little too slightly a product of it's specific origins. It's need was to promote the spread of freely useable fonts. That need was tied to SIL's work to promote the spread of freely available [religious] texts. There was naturally less of a need to protect the designs themselves. I would like to see an OFL (or OFL like license) that is stronger in it's protection of free fonts from the potential dangers of other designers or foundries taking free fonts (or parts of them) and privatising them.

[Member hra…]

Since there now are virtually no barriers (well, besides talent and time :-) to creating good free fonts, I believe blocking people from making money from fonts actually reduces social justice.

For example somebody can make an Armenian extension to Roboto Slab and give it away, while I can make one and sell it, and people can freely choose the free one or the good one. :-) No hard feelings, and everybody is happy. If I weren't allowed to make money from it, Armenian culture just lost a good font.

Virtually nobody capable of contributing something of quality to society says: "I'd like to be compensated doing this, but I'm not allowed... but let me just do it anyway." They either would do it for no compensation to begin with (so the option of making money doing it is no impediment) or would spend the time doing something else!

hhp

[Member Joh…]

Vernon: I would like to see an OFL (or OFL like license) that is stronger in it's protection of free fonts from the potential dangers of other designers or foundries taking free fonts (or parts of them) and privatising them.

The first of the Permissions and Conditions terms of the OFL license is this:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

An OFL font may be bundled with a commercial product, but cannot be sold as a product in itself. I'm not sure what else you mean by 'privatising' free fonts. What is your concern?

[When Ralph Hancock and I decided to make our Biblical Hebrew layout model open source, we deliberately avoided the OFL because it prevents utilisation in commercial fonts. We opted for the more liberal MIT license instead.]

[Member hra…]

I'm guessing Vernon would like a license that prohibits commercial bundling.

BTW what are the differences between MIT and Apache?

hhp