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

[Anoop Panavalappil]

November 26, 2019 12:31 PM, "aashiks" <aashiks at aashiks.in> wrote:

> I volunteer myself for this effort, as someone who has been around for a long time with SMC. I'd
> like to ask Akshay, Aboobacker, Joice and Balu to volunteer too. As another long time member I'd
> ask Anoop P (Gnoop) to join in. I believe we can verify and validate claims regarding SMCs fonts
> and licensing and recommend a proper way forward, crediting everyone and making sure that nobody is
> left bereft of appropriate credit.

Sure Thing. I'd be very happy to see this get resolved within the organization.

> 
> If you guys are agreeable I can organized a task force and see that issues are discussed and
> resolved within our issue tracker.
> 
>> 1. Move each of Rajeesh's font licensing allegations to corresponding
>> gitlab issues. Go through the codebases and resolve them thereafter
>> going
>> through codebases on its merit
>> 2. Do a Licensing Review on each fonts, (This is pending after 2015)
>> Follow
>> best practices for AUTHORS & CONTRIBUTORS credits. Avoid mentioning
>> names
>> in LICENSE files
>> 3. Separate feature table licensing, (maintaining it with the font is
>> hard). Let's come up with a clear HOWTO on reusing the code (eg: RIT or
>> other foundries). So adoption becomes easy.
>> 
>> on Point 4, I see a disturbing wrong articulation of my points raised
>> in
>> this list in past. So want to clarify the baselines clearly.
>> 1. Glyph formation is a language property, it is not copyrightable
>> 2. Glyph naming conventions is an innovation. But not copyrightable
>> since
>> it is an idea (Software is not patentable)
>> 3. Font feature tables as code is an expression and carry copyright to
>> its
>> authors. Copyright and License are to be preserved while reusing.

Agree. The "Credit criteria" should be discussed and agreed upon ASAP.

> 
> We would take these into account and produce a proper report as well. All the key people mentioned
> in the statement are an integral part of SMC and its history.
> 
> Persobally, I see this as something that could've been resolved in the organisation, and its
> pitiable that it had to come out this way.
> 
> --
> 
> Aashiks
> 
> --
> Sent from my Android device with Librem Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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~Anoop