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

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 12:22:25AM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> 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.

To be clear, the inclusion of the trademark notice is not a
designation of the associated name as "reserved" in the sense the
drafters of the SIL OFL seem to have intended. 

I understand Pravin to agree that the RFN mechanism is misguided in at
least the case of Lohit and Liberation fonts. 

> > 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.

The absence of a trademark notice wouldn't change the situation; at
most I think what you're saying (combined with how I'm looking at it)
is that absence of RFN and absence of trademark notice will give users
a false impression that Red Hat retains no trademark interest in the
font name. This possibility suggests there may be something positive
in retention of the trademark notice as a substitute for the abandoned
RFN practice, though admittedly for software projects we do not
routinely include trademark notices. I do not consider retention of
the trademark notice to be necessary. But, as owner of the trademarks
in question, Red Hat is leaving the decision whether to include the
trademark notice to the project maintainer's discretion.

If the trademark notice causes some unanticipated problem we can find
a way to clear that up. 

 - RF