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Open Fonts For The Web -- Harder Than It Sounds
simpl3x writes "of the nytimes articles posted today, this one about new, open fonts designed for the web was by far the most interesting. Here is a link to the project site, and here is a reason why it is necessary. For all the talk of the world wide part, the basics are still very local, aren't they? It will be interesting to see how one chooses a character on a keyboard!"
I don't know who Tim Bernard Lee is either. In fact, I am pretty sure he meant Tim Berners-Lee, one of the key people behind the creation of the World Wide Web.
Hardly obscure. The man has a Google Category all to himself.
Random and weird software I've written.
Actually it's more complex than that.
A digital font _program_ can be copyrighted.
The name of a font as you note can be protected by trademark law, as can any other product name.
see www.typeright.org for more details
as regards cheap clones, well, sadly there're all too many of them available (and no, I'm not going to cite sources). Fonts like software are hard to create and should only be freely available if the designer so wishes (of course it helps if you get a six digit grant from the Department of the Navy and other sources as did Dr. Donald E. Knuth when he made Computer Modern).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
America invented the internet. No, not Al Gore, but Tim Bernstein-Lee and Mark Andreeson created the World Wide Web ...
Erm, Tim Berners-Lee is not an American.
And Marc Andreessen created MOSAIC, the first graphical browser, but did not create the WWW itself.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana