lucidfox

you have access to the ppa as an ubuntu member? You don’t like the fact that its a member only privileged to view the font? You can get the fonts without signing an NDA?

Commit an act of civil disobedience..grab the fonts and redistribute the font publicly outside the PPA.

Such an action will most likely result in your Ubuntu membership being revoked.. thus revoking the privilege to NDA‘d material. Is your commitment to openness worth risking being excommunicated?

I’m pretty excited about it so far, as a regular user with no special access.

It seems to me like they are working on a new font, the license hasn’t been figured out yet, but they are excited about it and want to get feedback sooner than later.

The “nda” in the package name is old cruft, Paul Sladen filed a bug and I’ve assigned it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntufontbetatesting/+bug/602835 It was not intentional to confuse anyone with regard to signing an NDA of any sort.

Some things here:
– Distribution is limited because it’s a beta font, and in general font foundries who make fonts don’t like beta fonts to spread because once they do they feel it’s hard to track down who has the font and update that. I realize that that can be hard to understand, but we need the font out to people who can test it so it can be finished.
– Bitstream Vera (which is where DejaVu derives from) nor Droid had open betas, the font was presented under an open license as a complete font, so in a sense we’re kind of early, when it was announced at UDS we explained the intention to open the font to select people first, and then gradually allow more people access to it as it came close to completion.
– The license is not finalized (because there are things like lawyers), but will be a Free license, otherwise it wouldn’t be acceptable to ship in Ubuntu, since everything we ship in main (and by default) is Free Software (yes, even the Ubuntu One client software).
– The bit from the other poster about membership “most likely” being revoked is made up nonsense.

(Sorry about the indentation of my last post, I was assuming it would come out formatted)

jspaleta, you know, I’m actually tempted to do just that. But I tied too many things to my @ubuntu.com email, which would presumably get revoked along with membership. :(

Bruno Maag discusses this around 43:45 in the video that is linked in the announcement if you want more background on the project: http://ubuntudevelopers.blip.tv/file/3618693/

Don’t panic. Of course it won’t (well, it can’t) go into Maverick before it is free and without strings attached.

It might seem weird but if you looked at the UDS plenary session about the font you’d hear from the guy making it that once a font is released to the world people will start using it everywhere. Its not ready for widespread use so they want to keep it in the family so to speak. The licence isnt proprietary either its an open font its just restricted if your another distro/windows/apple from using it. So you can use it for websites..etc.

Well, no matter how you couch it, it’s a downer that I can’t look at it in this critical period of testing.

I know a good deal about fonts and font rendering and would like to take a look without being bothered to be part of Ubuntu Member cabal. I can file bugs just fine without being a Member.

Stunts like this are damaging to perception of Ubuntu in the free software landscape. It adds up.

Also, why do you care what the foundry thinks about having their unfinished product in he wild. You are the paying customer who commissions the work. Explain to them how it works best for you. Release early, release often, and stop discriminatory practices, plz.

The licence isnt proprietary either its an open font its just restricted if your another distro/windows/apple from using it. So you can use it for websites..etc.

I haven’t heard anything about it being restricted, and would hope it isn’t, as that would presumably fall afoul of the Open Source Definition:

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.

I am not sure what all the fuss is about. Canonical paid to make a professional font, which will be distributed freely once it’s all complete. For the moment being, they are asking only select people to preview it.

As a proud user of Ubuntu and open-source enthusiast, I have no problem with this. I don’t get to see the font right now, but that’s ok. It’s every inch Canonical’s right to release the font to the public in their own good time. Why do you have to lambast Canonical? Just because they are an open-source company, does that mean they have to do everything in the public? No!

Let’s make a comparison. Let’s say I’m working on a software code for Ubuntu. A patch or maybe a small application. I intend to put it out under GPL. It’s not quite ready yet, and I want just a select number of people to give me feedback, before I give a public testing. Is there anything wrong with that?

I’m as much of an advocate of Free software as most anybody, but I don’t see the issue with this. If it’s going to be released under a Free license (and they’re just deciding which one), we need to cut them some slack and let them figure it out.

Well it falls between the look and feel of the desktop which can be copyrighted and restricted. Which the icons and themes are already restricted. Its GPL compatible though.

There is no conspiracy, there is no secret plan to avert the good will of Free Software and Open Source – the reason for this is unfortunately rather boring: the font is not finished yet and we want to provide to a set of people who we know can provide some solid, constructive and instructive feedback; our Ubuntu Members have earned this respect, so it seems reasonable to provide it to them first.

The NDA thing is a bug, as Jorge says. When we have been through this round of testing it will be an open font. Job done. :-)

Jono, almost all software in Ubuntu is unfinished (when will it be finished?) and you don’t make hocuspocus like this with it. Release early, release often.

UX == Ubuntu navelgazing.

lucid.fox,

The reason why you aren’t going to commit and act of civil disobedience is exactly the reason Ubuntu has the membership model. You get both benefits AND responsibilities associated with that membership. Even if leaking the fonts is not excommunicatable offense you’ll feel restrain from doing it simply because you’ve been asked not to because you care about being a good member.

My suggestion that you do something rash was entirely tongue in cheek. If you were inclined to do it, you’d have done it instead of just shaking your fist in the wind in this post.

Is there anything in the licensing in the PPA which legally prevents you from republishing the testing font packages?

The fact that you feel restrained from doing something hot headed (at my deviously inspired urging) is exactly the point of the Ubuntu membership construction. You are invested.

And that’s sort of the point why they are releasing this to members only for pre-release feedback. Running it by people who are invested will help keep the feedback focused and constructive. Doing it this way will most likely enhance the signal to noise ratio. Sure some signal will get lost as well..but vastly more noise would go with it. As it stands how many people got the invite? 100+? Whatever the number is, Shouldn’t it be large enough to provide for a range of opinions?

Fonts aren’t the same thing as functional code. There’s much more a flavor of art departments and advertising associated with font creation..touchy-feely handwavy stylistic opinion mongering that you can’t reduce completely to a merit based technical discussion. Add to that, the line between bikeshedding and constructive criticism gets blurrier and fuzzier the further you move away from functional codebases into areas like fonts. The fact that Canonical is attempting to get external community focus-group feedback at all is not “a bad thing”™. Nor is it obviously a bad thing that they are leveraging their membership model to control the signal-to-noise ratio during pre-release.

jspaleta, this is nothing but cabalistic posturing. Ubuntu is rife with bikeshedding in every nook and cranny. And, as a community distro, always has been.

This was unheard of before. For instance, signing up for the Launchpad »edge« beta was a mere click away for all users. Now you claim that a form of /investment/ is needed to enforce normative behaviour. That plus the implied threat in your first post is really lame and appalling.

Is there anything in the licensing in the PPA which legally prevents you from republishing the testing font packages?

Yes, there is. It says the font is fully copyrighted by Canonical. And this is the only thing that — so far — has held me from redistributing the font. Not some ephemerical “being a good slave to Canonical” concerns.

What will the “source code” for this font be? Many open fonts are released in binary TTF/OTF format. Increasingly, some of the better ones are stored in version control and use FontForge format as source. For more font best practices, check out pkg-font’s foo-open-font-sources repository:

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-fonts/foo-open-font-sources/#foo-open-font-sources

What software are the font designers using to create the new font? Is it the FLOSS font stack in Debian/Ubuntu (fontforge, xgridfit etc) or some proprietary package?

I’ve already seen this font change a few times. I’m surprised this is of any concern. Launchpad was fully open sourced. You’re working with a company that invests a lot of time, effort, and money into these things. Kalliki Software (my company) does the same thing with many pieces of software. We don’t release FOSS until it’s actually ready. When it comes to a font, there’s a very clear line where it’s actually finished. Personally, I think this has really been dragged on something awful. My perception is that the author needs to be reminded what FOSS really means and what’s behind it. Go take a peak at some reading buddy.

And ya.. it is very hard to change a font once it’s released to the masses. Primarily because people snatch it up and uses it on things right away. I had a rather important project and slapped the unfinished font on three words. Honestly, I wish I used the old font because of a bug I’m going to go file right now.

Your complaining about font? As most have already stated, the only reason it’s released under the NDA is because it isn’t finished yet.

Actually, that’s not correct. The reason that it ‘had’ NDA was because it was an employee only project. It had it in the repos accidentally. (a bug was file to have it removed)

I was only explaining why it’s not available publicly yet.

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