12:40:00 <nirik> #startmeeting Free software fonts
12:40:00 <zodbot> Meeting started Sun Aug 11 12:40:00 2013 UTC.  The chair is nirik. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
12:40:00 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
12:40:17 <nirik> Started in school. Book: hard drive by bill gates.
12:40:39 <nirik> another book: steven levy's hackers.
12:41:03 <nirik> how many people have met rms? who found him cool.
12:41:12 <nirik> (various people raising hands)
12:41:40 <nirik> john taylor gatto, the underground history of education
12:41:53 <nirik> schools don't teach the way people learn, learning yourself
12:42:23 <nirik> studied graphic design
12:42:50 <nirik> rms came and gave a talk with copyright vs community.
12:43:04 <nirik> functional work - there is a function, a job to it. who decides?
12:43:14 <nirik> artistic works - novels, etc
12:43:24 <nirik> opinion works.
12:43:37 <nirik> things should be treated differently. Lead to creative commons.
12:43:49 <nirik> inspired to use free software
12:44:14 <nirik> libre graphics meeting in france... software improving rapidly.
12:45:05 <nirik> SLI folks working in fonts area in libre graphics.
12:45:32 <nirik> Tried to make fonts for all the various worlds writing systems.
12:45:58 <nirik> Important for small communities who aren't a market for commercial software.
12:46:18 <nirik> Gentium - made at the university of reading.
12:46:45 <nirik> They have a degree program in typeface design.
12:47:38 <nirik> Free software licenses didn't fit fonts at the time...
12:47:49 <nirik> free fonts license.
12:48:02 <nirik> Has a clause to cause you to rename it if you modify it...
12:48:37 <nirik> Did cantrell font in 2009 using only free tools.
12:48:50 <nirik> fontforge - George williams.
12:49:05 <nirik> Started fontforge when gtk/qt didn't support unicode.
12:49:16 <nirik> very functional.
12:49:23 <nirik> massive and feature complete.
12:49:32 <nirik> interface is not very clean
12:49:47 <nirik> Open font library - place for free fonts.
12:50:18 <nirik> Simple library of fonts, anyone can make an upload.
12:50:41 <nirik> html5 started taking off. Allowed linking to the font library.
12:51:04 <nirik> Google did something similar with webfonts API, google web fonts.
12:51:39 <nirik> 629 font families in google web fonts now.
12:52:09 <nirik> over 700+ billion font views.
12:52:27 <nirik> stats page to see usage of fonts.
12:53:26 <nirik> some amatuer fonts of very highly rated/used. Shows that if you give access to tools and a way to publish they will form a community.
12:53:47 <nirik> Become very useful to people.
12:54:01 <nirik> Tienne project
12:54:15 <nirik> Took two fonts and merged them... a font remix.
12:54:40 <nirik> appeal of free software, opens up possibilites.
12:54:55 <nirik> all the google web fonts are under free licenses.
12:55:18 <nirik> mailing list, but few other marks of a active community around it.
12:55:43 <nirik> There's a critique called "Why google web fonts aren't really open source"
12:55:55 <nirik> Font bakery project.
12:56:13 <nirik> CI on any changes and see differences
12:56:27 <nirik> 3 things for a community.
12:56:32 <nirik> 1. font tools
12:56:41 <nirik> Ikarus - mid 1970's
12:57:04 <nirik> ported to mac
12:57:20 <nirik> Fontographer - became an industy standard.
12:58:14 <nirik> When version 3 came out, they added python scripting to it. Mid 1990's.
12:58:30 <nirik> fontlab was the next popular tool.
12:58:52 <nirik> classic non free software story. not many people very happy with it.
12:59:05 <nirik> robofab was a free software add on to fontlab.
12:59:38 <nirik> UFO format - xml markup of the robofab model.
12:59:59 <nirik> Applications written on top of robofab.
13:00:12 <nirik> superolator - allows you to make a bold and normal fonts
13:00:58 <nirik> RoboFont - python based, very customizable.
13:01:24 <nirik> Fontforge
13:01:43 <nirik> real time collaboration feature...
13:01:56 <nirik> allows two people to work on the same font at the same time. Uses 0mq.
13:02:43 <nirik> Allows export to web/views.
13:03:33 <nirik> crafting workshops/teaching and using the money from that to pay developers to work on fontforge.
13:04:05 <nirik> Leanable Programming - visiualize program execution so it's easy to see how things work.
13:04:23 <nirik> Light table is an example of something that uses this model.
13:04:36 <nirik> Uses node-webkit
13:04:55 <nirik> would like to see fontforge move from old tech to new tech/web based and learnable.
13:05:15 <nirik> Fontforge has been used in workshops. It's been very successful.
13:05:56 <nirik> Design with fontforge project... designwithfontforge.com
13:06:19 <nirik> Writing documents and design and how to use it.
13:06:41 <nirik> 3. business model - full time people using those tools with that knowledge.
13:07:37 <nirik> kickstarter might be a model that works for new fonts and work around that.
13:07:55 <nirik> montserrat font project was well done.
13:08:06 <nirik> made more than 2x it's goals.
13:08:17 <nirik> other projects barely met their goals
13:08:30 <nirik> ttfautohint project.
13:08:41 <nirik> started with freetype maintainer
13:09:43 <nirik> raised 40k for using ttfautohint running on free fonts.
13:10:46 <nirik> fund i/o is a new setup for raising money
13:12:04 <nirik> Felix Breuers blog about how model works
13:12:38 <nirik> bountysource raised 1.1 million for free software.
13:13:02 <nirik> Another option is to try and become successfull and fund your own fonts work.
13:13:09 <nirik> Early Retirement Extreme
13:14:00 <nirik> <applause>
13:14:11 <nirik> #endmeeting