[Foundation-l] Software Policy Draft

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 9/4/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Fonts are an absolute pain when you do not have them, When they can be found
> in the first place, they are not consistent in their behaviour and size. The
> notion that because of there being a font for one operating system there is
> one for another is simply wrong.

Yes fonts are a pain. But the font that I've mentioned are all TTF,
and will work on any reasonable modern system.

Amusingly.. it is free fonts that reduce the pain since they are
available to more people and can be distributed more liberally.


> By putting this policy into concrete, we assume responsibilities that we
>do not have at this time. Helping sort out the mess that is what fonts are
>is one.

I haven't commented on the proposed policy as others have stated my
views more clearly than I would... but I do not see how you reach this
conclusion.

The policy would require that things we distribute will work with
freely licensed tools. This is already believed to be the existing
practice.

So far you haven't shown us an example of text we distribute which
can't be used with freely licensed tools, so there is no conflict.
Perhaps most people will read the text using non-free fonts, just like
most people browse the site with IE on Windows... Our practice is to
avoid doing things which make the decision to use free tools hard for
those who would not choose to use propritary tools.  I feel sorry for
people who browse our site using IE on Windows, but that they do is
their choice, and it has no direct conflict with making sure that our
work is useful for people without Windows.