[smc-discuss] Public statement by Rachana Institute of Typography

[Nandakumar Edamana]

I have no authority to comment on the current issue, but I'd like to
share a related thought in the present situation:

Glyph names becoming a base for copyright is disturbing. I recently
started developing a font (it's had good progress), and I had to pause
before naming the glyphs. I had first thought to follow the conventions
set by other ml fonts, but realized that the final product might give a
feeling that I've copied rules from the lookup tables of other fonts. I
ended up using the names shown on the Character Map, hoping that it
follows the Unicode standard. At least now I can say that I'm following
some international standard (of course, I had to develop a scheme to
name the signs and ligatures).

But I don't think it puts an end to the fear. What if somebody claims
that the author has copied [parts of] their lookup table and used some
script to bulk-rename the glyphs?

What I'm saying is that, two independently-developed fonts can have
similar parts and a plagiarized work can appear to be entirely original.

I think this is a right link to add here:
https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/alexey.html
(Context: https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/)

The analysis is posted by Tanenbaum as a response to the allegation
claiming that Linus had stolen the code of MINIX. The report disagrees
and states that certain similarities are inevitable (as the most obvious
or efficient solution to a problem is sometimes just one).

Let me remind you again: these are some related thoughts which I
consider appropriate for this thread. The statements are in no way
related to the RIT/SMC issue, as I haven't gone through the files and I
was not witnessing the development of the fonts in question closely or
in realtime.

-- 
Nandakumar Edamana
https://nandakumar.org

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