Should a Desktop License include Use in Online Design Tools?

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Comments

  • Nadine Chahine
    Nadine Chahine Posts: 102
    If I understand correctly, Adobe is the entity that is converting the font format and as such is helping to break the EULA? There's an easy fix for Adobe, which is to require the upload of WOFF files for web rather than converting the fonts itself. 
  • Stuart Sandler
    Stuart Sandler Posts: 382
    @Nadine Chahine Adobe and Canva are simply allowing the use of any and all uploaded fonts as web fonts (even though they're likely converting non-WOFF files) which runs afoul almost every Desktop Use EULA.
  • JoyceKetterer
    JoyceKetterer Posts: 821
    I have it on good authority that they both have a disallowed list, and you simply have to ask them to add your fonts.  I've not done it because I don't need to with Adobe and I'm taking a wait and see posture with Canva.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 388
    edited March 4
    Technically speaking, a woff is not converting to a new format, but it is lossless compressing the existing font. The argument is akin to licensing images, but saying you cannot zip them. Just focus on the use, not the format.
  • Stuart Sandler
    Stuart Sandler Posts: 382
    @Johannes Neumeier at mininum it should be considered a derivative work even if it's simply a repackaging of existing font data but indeed the use is what is prohibited. The repackaging to another filetype is the most obvious trigger for enforcement which is why my concerns are related to both.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,349
    Technically speaking, a woff is not converting to a new format, but it is lossless compressing the existing font.
    That’s true of woff, but not woff2, which involves changes to the input font data.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 388
    Okay, thanks for correcting my sloppy expression. We're talking byte level optimizations, so yes, lossless is wrong, but in terms of the compressed and decompressed fonts they are, shall we say, quasi-identical. My point rather was that it seems to me that too many type designers have the misconception that woff or woff2 are some sort of completely independent font format, when really it's just compression layer and all of the inner workings of the compressed font are retained and used as they are in the original font when decompressed again by the end user's browser. 

    That is to say, I don't think people object to woff2 usage on the basis of the compression alerting the font in in-perceivable ways, but because they think their files fonts get "manipulated" somehow. It's the wrong argument, because then, in order to avoid infringing, web apps could use the source ttfs/otfs and claim they are not in breach of the supposed forbidden "compression alerting the font". It's the use in a web setting that people object to, not the use of the format.

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,349
     in terms of the compressed and decompressed fonts they are, shall we say, quasi-identical.

    ‘Functionally identical’ was the goal of WOFF2, i.e. the input and the output fonts are not byte identical in the way they are in WOFF, but they provide equivalent functionality.

    It's the use in a web setting that people object to, not the use of the format.

    I basically agree with that, although a font license could explicitly prohibit creation of derivative web fonts as well as prohibiting use of the fonts on the web.
  • Christopher Slye
    Christopher Slye Posts: 164
     As a former member of the WOFF working group, I very much agree that WOFF should be considered a container* and not a “format” per se; that idea was somewhat lost in the rollout. WOFF2 is, IMO, useful and good, but it does complicate matters by making optimizations that change the original font.

    (* There was a time when OpenType itself was thought to be a “font container” of sorts... but I digress.)
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,349
    There was a time when OpenType itself was thought to be a “font container” of sorts
    Cough ... CFF ... cough.
  • JoyceKetterer
    JoyceKetterer Posts: 821
    edited March 10
    " but it does complicate matters by making optimizations that change the original font."

    I think it's one thing to have a technical conversation amongst font people but for the sake of reducing customer confusion I think it only makes sense to consider making woff files a derivative.  

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