Please add explicit support for the OFL (Open Font License)

[Nicolas Spalinger]

Although collaborative open font projects using the Open Font License can already enjoy Launchpad's features by choosing Other/Open Source in the licensing choices it would be much better to add explicit support for this widely used font-specific license.

The OFL (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL) is the community-recommended license for libre/open fonts which you can use/study/modify/redistribute. It is validated as a Free/Libre and Open Source license by both the FSF and the OSI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts http://opensource.org/licenses/openfont.html
The main community groups have given support to the licensing model: http://www.unifont.org/go_for_ofl/ and a high number of quality open fonts are released (or re-released) under the OFL.

The OFL is is in line with Launchpad policy as indicated on:
https://help.launchpad.net/Legal/ProjectLicensing

Various Launchpad projects already make use of this license but cannot pick it in their project description.

Please find a patch attached to provide explicit support for the license and facilitate the use of Launchpad for collaborative font design.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

This patch will not show up in the UI. This will work over API, but the license widget that allows users to pick a license must know what group the license belongs in. I belongs on the second group. There was discussion of adding a group on non-software licenses to license widget to accommodate GDFL. We decided at the time not to support it because there was not a lot of demand for it. There are 5 project with the OFL license registered in Launchpad.

[Nicolas Spalinger (yosch)]

Thanks for the extra details, I wasn't sure about how you wanted to handle the UI aspect. The second group you are talking about is "More open source licenses" right?

The OFL is a software and not a content license = fonts are software.

Maybe you can consider tagging the content licenses and making them visually distinct from the software licenses. (Other project hosting services like Google code provide a separate dropdown menu for choosing content licenses).

[Dave Crossland (davelab6)]

Fonts are fonts, not programs, but they may contain programs; however, they are always functional works. So I support Nicolas' suggestion that the SIL OFL be included in the list of software licenses.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Our initial desire to reduce the number of licenses Lp supports because it is difficult to show in the UI. We also wanted to encourage common licenses. The License widget solves the both points very well. Projects do use the GFDL and OFL and we want to support them (which is why the bug 299734 is still under consideration).

I think the widget lets us add them easilly. As a project registration, would I know to look in second block of licenses for OFL and GFDL? Do I want to create a block for content/asset licenses? I could move the CC licenses there too.

[Nicolas Spalinger (yosch)]

Yes tricky to get the UI right... I totally support focusing on major recommended licenses to prevent confusion and fragmentation via an unwieldy list.

I'd recommend a separate block with Creative Commons and other content licenses like GFDL.

But OFL should not lumped together with licenses in this block, fonts are not "data assets". Fonts are fonts are fonts. They fall under the software category along with MIT/Apache/etc. There is established case law to demonstrate that fonts are the software expression of typefaces.

[Launchpad QA Bot (lpqabot)]

Fixed in db-stable r9715 <http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/db-stable/revision/9715>.