From: Edward H. Trager (ehtrager@umich.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 04 2003 - 12:43:18 EST
On Thursday 2003.12.04 00:37:24 +0000, Michael Everson wrote:
> At 14:25 -0500 2003-12-03, Edward H. Trager wrote:
>
> >WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, Cherokee, and lots and
> >lots of other fonts that are of interest to specialized user
> >communities?
>
> Because I'm not independently wealthy? Because I already give as much as I
> can?
>
> >My hunch is that Everson Typography will never make any money from a
> >Linear B or Cherokee font anyway. The markets are just too small.
> >Giving away those fonts would benefit those communities while
> >simultaneously bolstering the reputation of the font vendor as a
> >charitable corporate citizen.
>
> I already have the reputation as a charitable citizen, haven't I?
Oh, yes, of course! I did not intend to suggest otherwise. I was merely
suggesting that professional type designers (you and all the others who
are reading the unicode list) donate whatever in your professional
work over the years might have a continuing beneficial impact on human
language communities, and specifically a humanitarian impact greater than any
monetary rewards that might otherwise be garnered from such works.
Organizations like SIL and projects like the Script Encoding Initiative
(which you have highlighted below) already provide possible forums for these
kinds of donations. Thank you for pointing out that such organizations are
also happy to receive charitable monetary donations.
> Perhaps it isn't charitable enough....
>
> >In fact, I'm sure marketing types could convince us that giving away
> >some stuff for free is good for business and later generates sales
> >of other stuff to all of those happy customers.
>
> YOU try to sell alphabets sometime.
Actually, I am a bioinformatics programmer, and to date I have given away
my programs away for free. The main reason I give them away for
free is fairly simple: the market of genetics researchers
potentially interested in buying them is too small,
so I would not make that much money trying to sell them. Alternatively, the
per-seat licensing fee would have to be quite hefty --too hefty-- for me to make any money
on it. My livelihood does not depend on selling these programs (I originally
wrote the programs to get my own work done more efficiently), and the internet
makes it easy to give the software away for free, so that's what I do.
Of course in the future things could change, as the market is expanding because
of advances in genetics, etc., and I actually did some research in collaboration
with a real business man to evaluate what changes would be required in one of my
programs to make it appeal to a much wider audience, and therefore marketable
at some future point in time. So, in the email I was really only suggesting
something --donation of digital intellectual property-- that I myself already do.
So, I can honestly say that I have put my digital intellectual property, if
not my money, where my mouth is. And I certainly will consider SEI as a candidate
for monetary donations in the future.
>
> >However, I would not suggest giving those fonts away to an OS vendor
> >like Microsoft or Apple or Sun or Redhat. You could either
> >distribute them from your own web site under an appropriate license
> >(i.e., one granting individuals free non-commercial use), or donate
> >them to a community organization [...]
> >
> >Just my two cents.
>
> I've got an idea. Why don't you, and your friends, and your friends'
> friends, all decide to give generously to the Script Encoding
> Initiative http://www.unicode.org/sei/ between now and the end of
> 2003? It's tax deductible.
>
> I put my money where my mouth is. I don't go on holidays or
> vacations. I attend standardization meetings two or three times a
> year instead. I spend a good deal of time working on script proposals
> and other aspects of this work. On occasion this has been helped by
> the SEI, and when it's not, I try to do the best I can even so,
> though my time has to be taken up typesetting instead. Sure, if I
> were much of a businessman, maybe things would be different. But so
> would the Unicode Standard 4.0. It would be a lot poorer.
>
> Do you believe in the Unicode Project enough to give to the SEI? To
> actually help us do what we need to do? And not just you, Ed.
>
> All of you.
> --
> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 04 2003 - 13:08:34 EST