mr@rat.cica.indiana.edu (Michael Regoli) (04/23/91)
][ Does anyone have public domain copies of the ITC Stone family of fonts for Adobe Type Manager? I'm looking for ITC Stone Serif, Stone Serif Italic and ITC Stone Sans Serif. Thanks. -- michael regoli mr@cica.indiana.edu regoli@iubacs.BITNET ..rutgers!iuvax!cica!mr
FLEGLEI@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (04/27/91)
To jump Adobe to the gun, the Stone family of faces, whether from Adobe as Stone Serif, Sans, Informal, or from ITC as ITC Stone Serif, Sans, or Informal, are copyright protected. There is no way for any part of their PostScript code (i.e. the character outlines and width tables, as well as kerning tables and misc. data) to be public domain. I believe it may be legal to exchange the BITMAP screen fonts only. But I may be wrong about that. They are certainly not public domain either, but may be without fee.
karl@apple-gunkies.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Karl Berry) (05/03/91)
> To jump Adobe to the gun, the Stone family of faces, whether from Adobe > as Stone Serif, Sans, Informal, or from ITC as ITC Stone Serif, Sans, or > Informal, are copyright protected. There is no copyright protection for fonts in the United States, or indeed, in most countries. It's true that font programs are protectible just as all other computer programs are, but that's very different from protecting the shapes. Other countries do have protection for typeface designs -- West Germany and England (in a muddled way). There is patent protection for fonts in the U.S., but it's hard to get; only a few fonts (Lucida among them) are patented. I don't think Stone is among them, but I don't know for sure. > There is no way for any part of their > PostScript code (i.e. the character outlines and width tables, as well > as kerning tables and misc. data) to be public domain. Right, their PostScript code is protected. Adobe makes the AFM files for all their fonts (as far as I know) publically available (through their archive server). The AFM files specify the widths and kerning pairs. > I believe it may > be legal to exchange the BITMAP screen fonts only. Since bitmap fonts aren't programs, they can't be protected. The bitmap fonts in the info-mac archives (among other places) are public domain. Of course, type designers are trying to change this, and get copyright protection for typefaces. Chuck Bigelow wrote an article in TUGboat a few years ago that still (amazingly) reflects the current state of things, more or less. (modulo England) It's clear that there is something to protect: a typeface design is as big a creative work as a novel, or a good-sized computer program, or a violin concerto. It's not something one can undertake without hope of reward, except in exceptional circumstances. But is copyright protection the right way to go? Fonts represented as computer files are easy to copy and to share -- I think society would benefit if such copying and sharing was not made illegal, but rather was encouraged. (This is the principle upon which rms established the Free Software Foundation.) One way in which type designers could still make money is by getting contracts -- let's say you and I want a new super typeface; so we get our friends together and hire, say, Chuck Bigelow to do the job for $x. He gets paid for his time; we get the typeface we wanted; and the typeface can now be freely used, to everyone's advantage. karl@cs.umb.edu