History Behind The TG version of "Yanone Kaffesatz": Koffee TG!

[urednik]

Yes, I respect that as already said, however this is not altering. Legally it is adding. Now I am not familiar with US system but here in Slovenia it can not be restricted, since it is of no use without our letters, it is like a car without wheels. And many font styles do unfortunately the same. They discriminate Slavic (and moreover Arabic ...) languages, which were centuries ago spread to more than a half of European continent. Now some guys from USA created computers without ever thinking about something else as Germanic or Romance alphabets and we have to suffer that also in 2012 almost on every step: UTF is not supported. This is really frustrating.
So as much as I respect your work, I still can not feel else but frustrated. You can use all fonts, however I can use one third of them. In our era this is pure discrimination. The law which prohibit adding our functionality is therefore against our democratic principles and hence a pure discriminative manipulation.
You might answer that the author has the right not to allow this set to be used for our characters but how would I feel then?
Of what use would such a decision be? Oh wait he maybe wants us to buy a version with my characters, where you can use yours free? It is not in the sense of EU democratic standards.

Sorry to be rude, pardon my English, but this way you can maybe better understand where my cynicism derives from

Anyways I already contacted the author both through mail and Twitter, but his autoreply was convincing. He will for 99% not be able to answer until mid of sept. My intention was not to publish that, but to respect his authorship, solely to test it.
Because there is a big possibility that this would not do. You seem to be sure that the webfont altered in this way would display correctly?
Hope you are wright! Thanks again!

[Gare]

Hi urednik—

Sadly, very few if any members on TalkGraphics are well enough versed in copyright law to interpret your request to satisfy the letter of copyright laws.

So what we are doing here is erring on the side of caution.

I understand your frustration and do sympathize with you completely. It seems as though something is very close to being in your grasp, but this stupid plate glass window is stopping you.

For what it's worth, TalkGraphics is hosted on a German server, I believe (MAGIX), and whatever legal issues they'd have would be rightfully theirs.

Let us not continue to discuss what international laws might be in effect, because none of us are qualified to debate this. No one at TalkGraphics is trying to start a fight or deliberately make your work harder, urednik.

You brought someone else's typeface to TalkGraphics and asked whether it could be modified, in theory and in practice.

The answer is "yes". I'm sorry that I appeared to give something and then take it away, but it wasn't mine to begin with and I apologize.

Clearly, there are people who are willing to help. We just need permission from the creator.

Respectfully,

Gary

[angelize]

Neither Gare, or myself are discriminating against anyone, I understand your frustration and as the author appears to be German I'm sure he will too. And yes I got the same auto response

I sent Yanone a link to this thread and invited him to join our discussion. We may have to wait a few weeks but that is better than potentially violating someone's copyright.

[urednik]

Not to be understood wrongly:
I appreciate your help as well as Mr. Gerners Yanone art of work very much. However to much of talking about this system is not helpful as well. It is making us believe that the world is not ours but from each of us a piece. Do you always drive intentionally by law? You don't. No one does. We all are people. Therefore it is not respect always which saves our lives, but moreover our concentration and willingness to understand new situations. So mentioning the law more than one time is rather an excuse to me
No offence please.

[Big Frank]

urednik, if you post your email adress here maybe somebody can show you at least how to achieve this yourself using some free or cheap software

edit : however anal much of the above sounds (and i both sympathise with your argument and and indeed agree) i reluctantly agree that those rules apply and must be observed because
1. this is a private forum belonging to xara/magiks
2. we have to obey the rules or get banned which isn't much fun

i hope yanone contacts you soon

[Barbara B]

Hi all.

I really appreciate that everyone here is being extra cautious and respectful of font creators rights and copyright in general. It is the policy of TalkGraphics to require the permission of the copyright holder before altering or posting fonts, when the font is released without any specific instruction from the author about under what kind of copyright permission the font is being released under or if there are restrictions that prohibit modifying or creating derivative works.

In this specific case YanoneKaffeesatz-Bold.ttf, YanoneKaffeesatz-Bold.ttf, YanoneKaffeesatz-Bold.ttf, YanoneKaffeesatz-Bold.ttf are available , as Angleize pointed out, from Google Web at http://www.google.com/webfonts/speci...one+Kaffeesatz where you can see the license information and download the font.

If you download the font from there, it comes with the OFL licence in the zip file, which by the way is the same license we used to release RoundHead TG and The Celebrated Burgeon Ornaments TG. I've posted it below for you to see.

From reading the license, it is clearly permissible to modify and add to the YanoneKaffeesatz font. It is also OK to use it anyway you want as long as the modified version is released and distributed under the same SIL Open Font License under a new name (so it is not confused with the original work) and the five listed conditions are met.

So if Frank (or anyone else who wants to help out the OP) would like to post a modified version of the font (adding a glyph counts as modifying) using a new name (see condition 3) and clearly release it as a SIL OFL font that would be OK to post here.

Since the widely used font was missing a useful standard character, it would be nice if all four fonts were "fixed" and we could release it as our first Font Aid fixed font as long as we are careful with the font name and how we acknowledge the original font creator.

Cheers,
Barbara

---------------------------

Copyright (c) 2010, Jan Gerner (post@yanone.de)
This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at:
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL


-----------------------------------------------------------
SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007
-----------------------------------------------------------

PREAMBLE
The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide
development of collaborative font projects, to support the font creation
efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and
open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership
with others.

The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and
redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The
fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded,
redistributed and/or sold with any software provided that any reserved
names are not used by derivative works. The fonts and derivatives,
however, cannot be released under any other type of license. The
requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply
to any document created using the fonts or their derivatives.

DEFINITIONS
"Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright
Holder(s) under this license and clearly marked as such. This may
include source files, build scripts and documentation.

"Reserved Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the
copyright statement(s).

"Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as
distributed by the Copyright Holder(s).

"Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting,
or substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the components of the
Original Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a
new environment.

"Author" refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical
writer or other person who contributed to the Font Software.

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify,
redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font
Software, subject to the following conditions:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components,
in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled,
redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy
contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be
included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or
in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or
binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user.

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font
Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding
Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as
presented to the users.

4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or the Author(s) of the Font
Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any
Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the
Copyright Holder(s) and the Author(s) or with their explicit written
permission.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole,
must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be
distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to
remain under this license does not apply to any document created
using the Font Software.

TERMINATION
This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are
not met.

DISCLAIMER
THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT
OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

[mwenz]

Got a question, Barbara--and thanks for piping in.

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font
Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding
Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as
presented to the users.

Does this then mean if the font is modified, it cannot use the original name as the menu name without explicit permission from Yanone should it be redistributed?

Mike "Not a lawyer" W

[Gare]

The answer is yes.

It can, and probably should be called something other than, "Frank's version of YanoneKaffeesatz". The Step 3 you quoted, Mike, is clear on this point.

Why not call it "TalkGraphics YT" so both the work Frank and others did on the font is reflected, while retaining a sense of the creator?

Whatever is fine, certainly fine by me. We just can't release this as Frank's work, or mine, or anyone else's as "Yanone Kaffeesatz".

Call it "Your Own Coffee Sense Bold".

Whatev'

Gary

[mwenz]

Thanks, Gary.

This was the first time I have ever read the license ... Mike

[Gare]

I wish legal stuff was written by someone other than lawyers, Mike!

So the Common Man could understand it and abide by it?

How about if legal contracts were written by software engineers when they're not writing documentation?

Okay, strike that thought...


-g