9 posts
How to make sure my fonts will be kept free for use?
Hi, folks.
My first post here, have just registered, forgive me if the subject has already been discussed before (I tried some search with some keywords but found no specific topic about this).
Is there any procedure that should be followed in order to keep my fonts free of charge and free for use anywhere, no matter what? I mean, how to get rid of any possible stealing after making them public? I have already submitted most of them to the HPCC site (UK -
http://www.hpcc.org/datafile/V23N5/luizfonts.zip) about a decade ago, but this site is mainly dedicated to Hewlett-Packard handheld personal & pocket computers and calculators' users. I would very much like to make my fonts available in a kinda more open-wide site, and I think DaFont could be this one. My doubt still prevails: is there a way to make sure my fonts will be kept free for use? Would allowing them to be downloaded from here grant this status?
Thank you for any guidance.
Luiz C. (Brazil)
Editado em 21/11/2013 às 07:05 por lcvieira_br
Hi Luiz,
If you submit your fonts here saying you want them to be free, they will be tagged as "free".
Dafont is the most popular font website for hobbyists, and is very cautious about the licenses.
But it doesn't prevent bad people (or bots) to download fonts from here and put them on other websites, often after having removed licenses text files.
A very common case here is people tagging their fonts as "free for personal use only", and finding them the day after on other websites, with the "Free" mention.
It's impossible to do anything about that :(
But in your case, as you want them to be free, they will also stay free on other websites
The most important thing to do is to write your license informations and your name directly in the information section of the font files (and you can of course keep your "readme files).
I hope you found your answer in these few lines.
Regards,
Damien
Hi, Damien.
First of all, thank you for your answer. Enlightening, in the aspect it took.
But let me add another one of the worries of mine: is it possible that someone else claims the font is his/hers and try to commercialize it? My fonts were also mentioned at Luc Devroye's Font Scene:
http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-43721.html . Maybe this is some excessive caution of mine, I do not know what do these fonts represent as writing or artistic tools. I recently created some other fonts, drawn from scratch, mostly as for 7- and 14-segment display mimics, and I would really like anyone who wants to use them to do so without worrying about having to pay someone for it.
Would it be OK to post them here? I am confident about DaFont, this is not the case, I'm just worried about the chance of having people that might try to register the fonts and cause problems to the ones that would like to use them. I also know that DaFont is actually helping anyone to have access to these fonts with no charge, and I like very much this concept, thanks DaFont! This is the main reason I would like to post the fonts here so they could be freely downloaded. I guess that after revealing two links pointing to the fonts and the mentioning of their 'birth' date - 2004, most o'them - I believe I should not be worried about that, right? If other sites actually post the fonts for free downloading, that would be fine for me, too.
Cheers and thanks again. And forgive me for posting that much words...
Luiz.
Hi
no problem for the long message
i think that as long as you keep your original source files and your preliminary designs, nobody could claim the rights of these fonts.
if you want to be sure about that, just burn a CD-R with all the font files and graphics, put it in a envelope, and send it to yourself using a registered letter. And DON'T OPEN THIS ENVELOPE. Keep it at home or in a safe place. This way, you'll keep a trace of the date, a trace of your name. If there ever is a problem, you'll have to open the envelope at the trial
i think it should work, that's the only method i know to prove it.
At least, you can do it for your newest-never-released fonts, before uploading them anywhere.
Hope you got what i mean and that it's clear for you !
Damien
Hi, Damien.
Once gain, thank you.
I surely followed your thoughts, good thinking. I'll do that ASAP, with all fonts and some 'printscreen'-captured image files of the pages mentioning them.
Also I'll be posting the fonts here this weekend. I just need to create the brief references showing them and how to use them. I also have a technical question about zero-size characters in TTF files, but I'll look for a possible answer somewhere in the forum prior to post a message about it.
Thanks again for your invaluable help. I really do appreciate that.
Luiz
(P.S. - I'm a native Portuguese speaker, English is actually the second idiom for me. Please, guys, have you found some weirdness in my words that might lead to misunderstandings, just let me know. I thank you for that mostly because, as a teacher, I like to improve my own knowledge base as well)
Editado em 21/11/2013 às 17:46 por lcvieira_br
Hi Luiz,
no problem for your english, most of the people here have english as a second idiom too.
Dafont is based in France, but gather people from all over the world. I'm french
so no problem about weirdness, as you seem to speak quite fluently. You're a teacher in what kind of discipline ?
Anyway, can't wait to see your fonts here !
i already downloaded your matric fonts from your provided link, but i really don't know what could be "7- and 14-segment display mimics"
Luiz, in most all font editors you can, as daaams wrote, add license and other info in the font header. Go to the font naming tab and you will probably see a button 'Advanced'. That button opens a screen where you can add all the info you want: License, free for personal and commercial use. Commercial redistribution strictly prohibited. Etc. Description, Made to mimic the lettering on HP devices bla bla bla.
What you can also do is replace the NotDef character (most times just a box) with a glyph of your own, for example, in your case, an LC monogram. So that, if anyone removes the license info from your font(s) you still have a unique identifier in the font(s). For the rest, if people want to cheat they will.
Wish you luck.
kk
daaams disse 
Yep, that's it! I deal with electronics, both digital and analog, and when it comes to the moment you need to design the front panel and you want to 'see' it prior to build it, using programs like CorelDRAW! or AutoCad or any other vector-based application will be handy. But when it comes to test the display fitting in terms of contents, I mean, how will characters appear in a 7- or 14-segment LED-based or LCD display, having a monospaced TTF with the original, look-like set of characters would lead to a better approach in final layout and data aspect.
When I decided to create these fonts back in the very first years of this century, most of them were related to HP calculators LCD and keyboard faceplates at first in order to help people willing to create calculator-related documentation. The dot-matrix family and 14-segment where the first ones.
I am just waiting for this weekend in order to post the fonts. I have some ideas for the examples. I also mentioned I have some doubts on zero-size characters but I am not sure about where to search for information here @ DaFont or somewhere else.
And Koeiekat, thank you for your suggestions, they are very good ones. I had once used one of the glyph with my initials as you suggest, but because I was dealing with a symbol font I filled all possible characters in the 0 to 255 code range (the SW I used was somehow old and could not generate more than 256 characters for one font). IIRC it was FontCreator for W95, and I used it with WME (yes, I had one computer running WME smoothly with no problems at all... It is disassembled but still runs fine).
Thank you all again, guys.
Luiz

Todos os horários são CEST. Agora são 12:44