Public domain pros and cons

Ray Larabie
Ray Larabie Posts: 1,435
in Type Business
What are the disadvantages of releasing a typeface as public domain as opposed to creative commons? Assume in this case I don't care about controlling the project after it's been released, don't expect monetary compensation and I'm fully comfortable with the idea of it being in the public domain.
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Comments

  • Khaled Hosny
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 289
    Mostly that “public domain” differs from a jurisdiction and might even not exist at all:  https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Public_domain
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    To expand​ on what Khaled wrote: public domain is going to result in email. From all the people who don't know what it means. They're going to want you, a Canadian living in Nagoya, to try adjusting it to their locale. But Creative Commons is already explained in simple terms in just about any language that exists on the web. So a CC license probably means fewer support emails for free font.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,435
    "fewer support emails"

    Sold!
  • Samuil Simonov
    Samuil Simonov Posts: 110
    @James Puckett What about CC0? Isn't is basically equivalent to public domain, but phrased unambiguously?
  • Paul Miller
    Paul Miller Posts: 273
    I like the SIL Open Font License (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_Open_Font_License) which says just about the same as the GNU GPL but in a lot fewer words.

  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    CC-0 is the preferred license if you want to release something as "public domain". It's basically "public domain or as close as possible".
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    Or, offer the font under the user's choice of several highly permissive licenses.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    None of the cc licenses, including cc zero, are good for fonts. All except cc zero have attribution terms which may require eg a business card to have attribution text about the typeface. Cc zero says you can't assert any other rights in the work, even if you later want to on some situation. 

    If you want to allow unrestricted use, the spirit of public domain, use the sil ofl. 
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    edited April 2017
    If you want to allow unrestricted use, the spirit of public domain, use the sil ofl. 

    Or the fantastically simple and unrestrictive MIT license: the 'do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want' license.
  • Samuil Simonov
    Samuil Simonov Posts: 110
    The OFL is a copyleft license, so while it's a license that is specifically tailored to fonts, it's definitely not similar to releasing a font into the public domain.

    A good "public domain" license would allow the licensee to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell your font without any compensation or obligation to mention your name or obligation to release the derivative work under any specific license, plus the usual warranty disclaimer ("THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND," etc).

    I still feel that CC0 is the best option if you want nothing from your font or glyph or whatever.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    Copyleft keeps things in the public domain, so it's a great choice if that's your intent :)
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    Perhaps we need to clarify whether we're talking here about a typeface design or a font? Ray's original post spoke of 'releasing a typeface as public domain', but some of the follow-up comments refer to fonts.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,435
    @John Hudson
    It's a family of 6 fonts. I'm probably going with CC0 and anyone making variations or derivative fonts will be free to release it themselves under whatever license they want. OFL doesn't seem to fit because there's a unique symbol set that I want to make available for inclusion in other fonts with no attribution requirements. I checked all the OFL licenses and they seem too restrictive for this particular project but perhaps useful for projects where I want to retain some rights.
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    Ray, that sounds like a healthy conclusion. :) 

    One thing that we hadn't mentioned here is multiple licensing: much software (e.g. the FreeType rasterizer) is released under dual licenses, while some fonts are released under multiple licenses. 

    It is possible to release a font under two concurrent licenses, e.g. "OFL and CC0" or "MIT and OFL", or even "OFL and commercial EULA". 

    With multi-licensed software, the user can choose which license is more suitable to their needs and use just that one.

    The tricky thing is that if they modify/extend your font, they math release the changes under just one license, or several. So with a "CC0 and OFL" licensed font, another user could add some glyphs, and release there modified version under "OFL", "OFL and CC0", "just CC0" and, since CC0 is de facto public domain, also under any other license, commercial or opensource, or a combination of licenses. 

    The "OFL and CC0" combo may not be very suitable for your project, but I'm mentioning this mechanism for the sake of completeness. Sometimes, multi-licensing is useful, especially when creating code or fonts which is of interest for various communities, each of them being invested into a particular license or licensing model (e.g. one group wants copyleft code like GPL or OFL, another wants a liberal license like BSD, MIT, Apache 2 or CC0). 
  • KP Mawhood
    KP Mawhood Posts: 296
    @Adam Twardoch

    End user's perspective – so someone could release the same font under a commercial EULA on one website, and OFL on another website…?
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    John, indeed that is a good point. Contracts do overrule the general regulations of course. 
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    (This is not legal advice, nor the view of my employer, but merely my own personal chat on this forum.)

    Adam, first, cc0 and ofl are not opposite of each other at all, their joint opposite is restricted licenses. It's naughty of you to conflate up and down in that way ;)

    Both respect the public's right to make derivatives, and ofl keeps the public's right intact and cc0 doesn't. If someone's goal is to dedicate a typeface to the public domain, ofl makes more sense to me at achieving that goal. 

    Second, as you well know, the ofl requires downstream distribution to be under the ofl "and only this license." Or words to that effect. So while your observation is true that someone who is a copyright holder for 100% of the work can distribute under several licenses, it's only true in a narrow sense with that qualifier; when the work has a second copyright holder, it seems to me that they are bound to only distribute under ofl, or only under the other license​, because the ofl forbids distribution under non-ofl licenses. 

    And this your proposed dual license scheme fails at the first redistribution. 

    Its OFL or bust ;)
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    Dave, the OFL requirement of downstream distribution being under the same OFL license is exactly what makes OFL distinct from public domain. I mean, there's nothing in the public domain status of the plays of Shakespeare that requires a publisher to distribute books for free or to allow another publisher to rip off the covers and distribute them under another cover.

    Now, it may simply be the case that software and other digital media works don't really have an equivalence of public domain as properly understood. The fact that we're debating what font software license is most like public domain indicates that this might be so: that software never escapes from licensing, whereas true public domain is the absence of any license (the earliest forms of legal copyright were licensed monopolies granted by the state: absence of license was absence of copyright).

    Maybe our categories are confused, and it only makes sense to talk in terms of public domain with respect to typeface designs, not fonts?
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    Personal opinion, not legal advice:

    John, you are raising a point that I was only referencing by implication, so I want to thank you for that. My view is that in the eu and many other places, unlike the us, and as Khaled had said, you can't put something in the public domain, it can only have the monopoly rights adhered to it expire. So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties. Maybe you don't mind your work that you intended for everyone with a computer not being available to everyone with a computer, but it seems kind of short sighted to me. 

    Ray, you say you want fewer support emails. Only the ofl is going to deliver that, because everything else is less common and going to generate more questions. Adam and John both know from the Noto mailing list how many questions Noto gets, under ofl, so there's no way away from it, but using the same license as the majority of other libre fonts (with an extensive and well maintained FAQ) is the best Ray can do. (Well maybe the way to get away from it completely is to ask someone else to maintain the fonts. I'm happy to do that...  If they are ofl :)

    In the USA typeface designers are categorically all public domain except those subject to design patents which are very few and those last for 15 years. In the eu there are design rights that adhere for a few years unless registered and then join the public domain; if registered they join after 5 years unless re-registered, which can be done up to a maximum term of 25 years. In most places it's ambiguous. In Israel typeface designs are subject to regular authoring copyrights, so I'm not sure how anyone draws anything there without risking a lawsuit. Well, they just shoulder the risk, I guess. 

    Anyway, I don't think the meaning of the public domain is that all monopoly rights expired, that's just the situation. The meaning of all monopoly rights expiring is that the public's freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute the work is unfettered; and no monopoly rights can be re-adhered (as far as I know.) So the ofl recreates that situation before the monopoly rights expire. 
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    Just to comment on one of Dave’s points:

    “In the USA typeface designs are categorically all public domain except those subject to design patents”
    (corrected “designers” to “designs”)

    This is true of the abstract design. Note that the instantiation of that design in a digital outline font is subject to copyright, however. This is true as far as has been tested in the courts to date, and as recognized by the copyright office, which made a specific policy change to allow copyright registration of the code of outline fonts (PostScript, TrueType, OpenType).
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    edited April 2017
    Dave:

    So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties.

    I don't think third parties are subverting that intent unless they were somehow able to prevent other parties from continuing to make the work freely available. What I like about something like the MIT license is that it allows basically any use at all, including 3rd parties finding novel ways to economically exploit the value of the work, and derivatives thereof, without undermining the right of anyone else to obtain and distribute the work or their own derivatives freely. That actually corresponds pretty well to my usual intent when I open source something: I really do think people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it so long as they don't interfere with other people doing whatever the fuck they want.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    John Hudson said:
    Dave:

    So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties.

    I don't think third parties are subverting that intent unless they were somehow able to prevent other parties from continuing to make the work freely available. What I like about something like the MIT license is that it allows basically any use at all, including 3rd parties finding novel ways to economically exploit the value of the work, and derivatives thereof, without undermining the right of anyone else to obtain and distribute the work or their own derivatives freely. That actually corresponds pretty well to my usual intent when I open source something: I really do think people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it so long as they don't interfere with other people doing whatever the fuck they want.
    I think preventing Nth party downstream recipients from locking up the work and thus preventing N+1th parties doing what they want furthers your aim. 

    Is the "no sale by itself" clause in ofl a concern?
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    edited May 2017
    I think preventing Nth party downstream recipients from locking up the work and thus preventing N+1th parties doing what they want furthers your aim. 

    If what the Nth party has done is so significant as to be preventatively difficult for someone else to reproduce based on what the N-1th party had done, then maybe it represents an added value that the Nth party should be able to exploit. If what the Nth party has done is not so significant, then the N+1th party can go back to N-1 to reproduce it, or to any other open version all the way back to the original.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    maybe it represents an added value that the Nth party should be able to exploit


    Yet, in the Slabo project, when faced with a choice between OFL or Apache, you chose OFL... Will you release that under Apache, so I can add value and exploit it? :)
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    Will you release that under Apache, so I can add value and exploit it?
    Sure. How much you want to pay for that license?
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    edited May 2017
    I'm sorry if I misunderstood, but, isn't that moving the goalposts? I thought you were recommending non copyleft over copyleft...

    Are you saying that it's irrelevant what the restrictions are, what counts is whatever maximizes revenue? So as the Nth type designer OFL is preferred, but as the N+1th then non-copyleft is preferred?

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