Open-source typefaces

[Té Rowan]

@hrant – Sadly, I'm not omniscient. In particular, I did not know I looked so dreadfully boring to you lot.

[hrant]

Who said anything about boring?

But what do you mean by "omniscient"? Seems like a really unplain word.

hhp

[Té Rowan]

Last time I checked, 'omniscient' had only one meaning: Knowing everything.

[J. Tillman]

Chris Dean, I support, in general, your various posts regarding clear communication. And to everyone, don't assume you know the background or qualifications of everyone here. All are interested in type, but from different angles. They may be type designers, or students, or graphic designers or technical writers. They may be native English speakers or English may be the second or third language. So take the time to be clear, even if it means putting an explanatory phrase into your post if it is needed.

Back on topic: Deja Vu
main page: http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
license: http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/License

Gentium, a SIL font
main page: http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium
SIL license: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
FAQ: http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium_faq

All the SIL fonts home: http://scripts.sil.org/FontDownloads

[hrant]

take the time to be clear

Clear is relative, and time is priceless.

hhp

[Chris Dean]

So far we have:

Open Baskerville

Source Sans Pro

Lato

PT Sans/Serif

[HVB]

These SAY they're open source fonts. They may be;

http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/top-10-open-source-web-fonts

Google CALLS their collection of free web-fonts "open-source", but they don't appear to be.

- Herb

[Karl Stange]

Google CALLS their collection of free web-fonts "open-source", but they don't appear to be.

The article, Why Google Web Fonts aren't really open source by Matthew Butterick from his website, Typography for Lawyers raises some very interesting points about Google's approach.

[Karl Stange]

Crimson is a font designed by Sebastian Kosch and released under the SIL OFL:

http://www.aldusleaf.org/crimson.php

[Karl Stange]

The Arsenal free font for Cyrillic and Latin, winner of a Ukranian font competition hosted by the Mystetsky Arsenal Foundation and the Stairfors Design Studio was recently released by Andrij Shevchenko under the SIL OFL. According to Andrij in the discussion in the Release forum, giving the font away was one of the goals of the contest.

[Karl Stange]

The Linux Libertine and Biolinum fonts have been released under both the SIL OFL and GNU GPL with font exception:

http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=91&L=1

[Karl Stange]

Cyreal hosts a number of fonts released under the SIL OFL:

Lora, designed by Olga Karpushina:

http://cyreal.org/2012/07/lora/

Alice, designed by Ksenia Erulevich:

http://cyreal.org/2012/07/alice/

Wire, designed by Alexei Vanyashin and Gayaneh Bagdasaryan:

http://cyreal.org/2012/07/wire/

Junge, designed by Alexei Vanyashin:

http://cyreal.org/2012/07/junge/

Marmelad, designed by Manvel Shmavonyan:

http://cyreal.org/2012/07/marmelad/

Marko Horobchyk, designed by Zhenya Spizhovyi:

http://cyreal.org/2011/12/the-making-of-marko-horobchik/

Lobster Cyrillic, an expansion of Pablo Impallari's Lobster by by Alexei Vanyashin and Gayaneh Bagdasaryan:

http://cyreal.org/2011/03/lobster-cyrillic-realeased/

[Karl Stange]

Volkorn by Friedrich Althausen is a nice family of four fonts which was originally released under a Creative Commons license but has subsequently been updated and released under the SIL OFL.

This is a good example of how important it is to try and trace the source of a given font to the original designer and check the application of a particular license as there are significant differences between the freedoms afforded by these two different licenses.

The Guidebook section of the Open Font Library site has a good overview of and links to information about various open source and free software licenses.

[Renaissance Man]

J. Tillman: > You left out styles, designer, language support, description."Take the time to be clear ... putting an explanatory phrase into your post if it is needed." What's a FAQ?

Chris: >"So far we have...": You left out Andada

To all those joining the "clear, plain, explanatory" Police: Oh ye of so little humor. You're all missing hrants point: He's mocking you!

If every post had every word, term, and fact spelled out in excruciating detail, each post would be longer than most threads, and we'd have little time left to do anything else. Instead of stooping to the lowest common denominator and assuming ignorance on a massive scale, let's give some credit to the Typophile audience. BTW (that's by the way) I'm ticked off by the hypocrisy of the Police: most don't even follow their own guidelines for clarity, detail, or organization. Glass houses, indeed!

How did a thread about "Open source typefaces" get to be about "plain language? Oh, yes, Chris started both. It would be nice it we stayed on topic. In General Discussions, "Anything goes." I thought that meant any topic was fair game for a thread, not that everything but the kitchen sink was OK within a thread.

[Renaissance Man]

Volkorn has no kerning table. No, I'm not going to explain that.

[dumpling]

So for most of us, these are the three basic goals:
- stay alive
- have kids
- keep them alive

... in other words, quantity over quality.

[Jens Kutilek]

So, suddenly a list of fonts starts to form.

My 2 cents: Unless a font being «Open Source» is your only criterion for choosing a font, such a list isn’t very useful.

And I’m still wondering about «Open Source typefaces», that term doesn’t make sense to me. What’s the source of a typeface? The type designer’s head? hand?

[Renaissance Man]

Robert, if you're assuming ignorance on a massive scale for your kids, please don't have any.

[Karl Stange]

And I’m still wondering about «Open Source typefaces», that term doesn’t make sense to me.

It would perhaps be more accurate to describe them as fonts released under an open source license, as much as you might describe fonts released by a major foundry as released under a commercial license.

[altsan]

Raph Levien has a couple, in particular Century Catalogue and Inconsolata.

The M+ series have the following, extremely simple, licence:

These fonts are free software. Unlimited permission is granted to use, copy, and distribute it, with or without modification, either commercially and noncommercially. THESE FONTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY.

Old Standard seems to be released under the SIL OFL.

So is Cardo.

[Karl Stange]

RibengUni, designed by Bivuti Chakma and Jyoti Chakma with assistance from Jan Żurawski is a recently released font that supports the Chakma script. It is licensed under the SIL OFL and uses Paul Hunt's Source Sans Pro (Regular) as the basis for its Latin component.

[HVB]

How does 'open source' differ from 'public domain', where permission is explicitly granted to modify, re-publish, etc.?

[Karl Stange]

How does 'open source' differ from 'public domain'

In my experience through the presence of an explicit license. Where I have seen fonts "released" into the public domain they are accompanied by a statement which makes that clear without imposing any kind of license. For example, Barry Schwartz's Goudy Bookletter 1911:

http://crudfactory.com/font/show/gb1911

Clicking on the "Public Domain" link on that page takes you to the Wikipedia entry for public domain.

[Jens Kutilek]

It would perhaps be more accurate to describe them as fonts released under an open source license, as much as you might describe fonts released by a major foundry as released under a commercial license.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, my confusion arose from the terms «Open source font» vs. «Open source typeface», as both were used in this thread, and my impression was that they were used to mean different things.

Open source fonts are easy to define for me, the source being a FontLab VFB file or FontForge or UFO file, and being made available together with the fonts under an Open Source licence.

[Karl Stange]

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, my confusion arose from the terms «Open source font» vs. «Open source typeface», as both were used in this thread, and my impression was that they were used to mean different things.

I am pretty sure that it comes down to them being used interchangeably as opposed to referring to different things, at least in the context of this thread but detailed re-reading may prove otherwise.

For my part I have been referring to fonts licensed under a specific open source license, as per your definition, sorry if I have added to the confusion by using the terms interchangeably. In some cases it may be the intention from the initiation of a concept, through the drawing of letters to engineering and distribution to consider the typeface as "open source" in whatever sense people choose to interpret that and the more philosophical debates at the beginning of the thread are certainly more along those lines, but as Chris was asking for a list (and as this is something I would find useful as well) that is what I have focused on.