Adobe source Sans Pro fonts

[Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>]

Hello;

Of course it's too late for AOO 3.4.1 but Adobe has made available
a new set of free fonts (as in OFL- which we temptatively classified
Category-B)

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html 


We should probably consider them for inclusion in AOO 3.5.

BTW, I am also aware that Liberation fonts are being rebased on
the Google fonts and released under OFL. Right now there doesn't
seem to be any advantage in switching them but maybe in the future
we should. 

cheers,

Pedro.

Re: Adobe source Sans Pro fonts

[Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>]

Hi Herbert;


>________________________________
> From: Herbert Duerr <hd...@apache.org>
>To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org 
>Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 2:52 AM
>Subject: Re: Adobe source Sans Pro fonts
> 
>On 09.08.2012 22:55, Pedro Giffuni wrote:
>> Of course it's too late for AOO 3.4.1 but Adobe has made available
>> a new set of free fonts (as in OFL- which we temptatively classified
>> Category-B)
>> 
>> http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html
>> 
>> 
>> We should probably consider them for inclusion in AOO 3.5.
>
>That is great news, thanks for sharing. They look beautiful.
>

Actually I learned about them indirectly through imacat's fb :).

FWIW, the LibreOffice and AOO packages in FreeBSD are both
using the system fonts so I plan to package the fonts independently
for FreeBSD. Adding the fonts in AOO is not urgent for me so if
some other committer is in a hurry .. please go ahead ;).


>> BTW, I am also aware that Liberation fonts are being rebased on
>> the Google fonts and released under OFL. Right now there doesn't
>> seem to be any advantage in switching them but maybe in the future
>> we should.
>
>Most of the Liberation fonts have been relicensed under the OFL, with the exception of Liberation Sans Narrow family, which had been contributed under the restrictive license the other Liberation font faces were under. Until this is resolved upgrading to the relicensed version would lose the Liberation Sans Narrow font faces.
>

Here is an interesting comparison between the old Liberation and the
Google croscore fonts:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/Liberation_vs_Croscore_fonts 

It seems to me like the Liberation guys simply renamed the Google
fonts: if they orderly rebase their old enhancements on top of the
renamed fonts then it may be a good idea to adopt the Liberation
2.x fonts. Well, we already don't carry the Liberation Sans Narrow
font so "upgrading" we don't really lose anything ;).  At the moment
the Google fonts are the same as Liberation 2.0 so I don't see a need
to update them, plus having the Chrome Fonts with different names
to the Liberation Fonts is good if people need to install the Sans
Narrow in Liberation 1.x.


>As I accidentally have some insight of the problem here are the facts:
>- their counterparts were GPL licensed, so they inherited this constraint
>- they were produced during work time, so the designer's employer of that time has the rights to them
>- the designer would be happy with relicensing them to a permissive license but only his ex-employer has the right to do so
>

At the time it was thought that the GPL could be commercially friendly
but it is clear that the GPL, with our without exceptions, is an awful license
for most things and specifically for fonts. This is also an issue for ghostscript
fonts which are for all purposes stagnated.

I think the licensing issue forced us to be a few months ahead of our time
when we chose to move to the Google Chrome fonts. 


In the future I think it would be nice to have some kind for hosting services
like Google's Web Fonts:

https://developers.google.com/webfonts/docs/developer_api 



Just dreaming, perhaps ;).

Pedro.

Re: Adobe source Sans Pro fonts

[Herbert Duerr <hd...@apache.org>]

On 09.08.2012 22:55, Pedro Giffuni wrote:
> Of course it's too late for AOO 3.4.1 but Adobe has made available
> a new set of free fonts (as in OFL- which we temptatively classified
> Category-B)
>
> http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html
>
>
> We should probably consider them for inclusion in AOO 3.5.

That is great news, thanks for sharing. They look beautiful.

> BTW, I am also aware that Liberation fonts are being rebased on
> the Google fonts and released under OFL. Right now there doesn't
> seem to be any advantage in switching them but maybe in the future
> we should.

Most of the Liberation fonts have been relicensed under the OFL, with 
the exception of Liberation Sans Narrow family, which had been 
contributed under the restrictive license the other Liberation font 
faces were under. Until this is resolved upgrading to the relicensed 
version would lose the Liberation Sans Narrow font faces.

As I accidentally have some insight of the problem here are the facts:
- their counterparts were GPL licensed, so they inherited this constraint
- they were produced during work time, so the designer's employer of 
that time has the rights to them
- the designer would be happy with relicensing them to a permissive 
license but only his ex-employer has the right to do so

Other than that I find it noteworthy that there are a couple of problems 
that could have been avoided if a permissive license such as ALv2 had 
been used in the first place instead of the much more restrictive 
licenses they originally had:
- RedHat found the restrictive license of the Liberation fonts too 
constraining and re-licensing cost them quite some effort
- in the Apache OpenOffice project a lot of work had to be done to get 
rid of the parts with a restrictive license
- the LibreOffice project has to put in a lot of effort for rebasing 
their code base onto Apache OpenOffice to benefit from the more 
permissive license there and to allow easier access to upstream patches
- the Liberation Sans Narrow fonts cannot be relicensed unless they are 
granted by the designer's employer of the time he worked on them

Herbert