
The OFL-1.1 license on Public Sans violates 17 USC § 105 - beefhash
https://github.com/uswds/public-sans/issues/30
======
eropple
For those who don't read the thread: the original poster attempts to assert
that the OFL is not being followed correctly because US government employees
cannot copyright (in the United States, that is--they need not be elsewhere,
which is something often forgotten) governmental work.

My non-lawyery, albeit experienced with IP management and the open-source
licensing rabbit hole, assessment is that that makes very little sense. The
OFL states that derivative works must be under the OFL--they cannot be
released under "any other license"\--but assignment to the public domain _isn
't a license_, while from a permissive perspective the OFL is a subset of the
permissions granted via public domain. Public Sans is a derivative of Libre
Franklin, which is licensed under the OFL; derivatives likewise are
necessarily OFL even if changes made by US government employees are public
domain.

I seem to recall from other libre font discussions that @mbutterick (the OP)
has something of an axe to grind about libre fonts in general, though I don't
recall specifics.

~~~
beefhash
> I seem to recall from other libre font discussions that @mbutterick (the OP)
> has something of an axe to grind about libre fonts in general, though I
> don't recall specifics.

He does believe that most of them are of sub-par quality and he has reason to
be biased (due to being in the business of selling fonts himself), but also
cites some counter-examples[1]. I don't think he's opposed to libre fonts as a
concept.

[1] [https://practicaltypography.com/free-
fonts.html](https://practicaltypography.com/free-fonts.html), of which he is
the author

~~~
eropple
Could be. Like I said, I only dimly recall it.

Google employees have made a few really good libre fonts. Oxygen is my go-to
font for almost anything design-related that I do precisely _because_ it is a
really solid free font.

[https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Oxygen](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Oxygen)

