[Lohit-devel-list] Planning to drop Reserved Font Name (RFN) from OFL.txt

[Dave Crossland]

On 28 December 2012 00:07, Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 03:25:41PM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
>> On 27 December 2012 15:23, Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 11:04:12AM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
>> >> On 27 December 2012 08:57, Pravin Satpute <psatpute at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >> > 2. Added Trademark line in COPYRIGHT file
>> >>
>> >> I am very confused - this contradicts the idea of dropping of the RFN.
>> >
>> > That statement itself seems to contradict something you said on this
>> > list on 6 December 2012 regarding Overpass:
>> >
>> >   If 'Overpass' is considered a valuable Red Hat trademark, I'd
>> >   personally suggest declaring trademark notices alongside copyright
>> >   notices for both licenses.
>> >
>> > (unless I misunderstood it).
>> >
>> > In any case, I don't see a contradiction. The RFN is used to add a
>> > trademark-like copyright condition to the OFL. The trademark notice is
>> > just a trademark notice.
>>
>> Right - but Pravin said,
>>
>> >> > we have decided to drop RFN from Lohit fonts.
>>
>> which suggest removing trademark notices also.
>
> Ah, I see - I think I did misunderstand your earlier comment. I now
> understand you to have been saying "if the name is so important, why
> not include *both* the RFN and a conventional trademark notice".

Right - or, more importantly, "if the name is not so important, don't
use an RFN and don't use a conventional trademark notice" - and I
suggest the names can not be important to font projects that are
developed in public, since public development requires lots of copies
being distributed all over the place with the reserved name.

Unless such projects are set up for development with a 'code name' and
then releases are carefully made with the 'product name' that includes
the RFN and trademark notices.

Since Lohit and Overpass are not developed like that, but are
developed publicly, and those names don't seem important to Red Hat, i
suggest dropping RFN and Trademark notices.

> I instead had thought you meant "why bother to use the RFN mechanism -
> if the name is so important you can just include a trademark notice".

No, that's not what I meant :-)

> In any case, I don't see the harm in the project maintainer including
> the trademark notice.

It seems harmful to send mixed messages about if downstream users
should consider the name as restricted or not.