Foundries
The people who design fonts have the most at stake. Their livelihood depends on proper font licensing. How are the various foundries responding to the EULA abstract plans?
Larger foundries
- Adobe ;
- Agfa-Monotype ;
- Bitstream ;
- Linotype ;
- URW++ ;
Smaller foundries
- Emigre ;
- Font Bureau ;
- Hoefler & Frere-Jones ;
- House ;
- Letraset ;
- P22 type foundry ;
- Paratype ;
- Porchez Typofonderie ;
- Storm ;
- T-26 ;
- Underware ;
Font distributors
Font distributors would like a way to help font customers purchase the EULA that’s just right for them. Some customers might wish to browse only fonts that allow PDF embedding, or to exclude fonts that disallow making GIFs for web use.
With EULA abstracts this becomes possible, along with the opportunity to charge customers extra for upgrades if the particular usage is not covered in the default EULA. An interface consisting of list of checkboxes, corresponding to items in the EULA abstract, becomes possible; the price would change depending on the items selected.
Such functionality benefits greatly from point-of-sale modifications to the font file:
Types of embedding
- editing the embedding bits to suit the customized EULA ;
- storing data about the abstract EULA in the license field ;
- font personalization .
Font tool makers
Font editing programs.
FontLab
FontLab is the leading software most designers and foundries use these days to make fonts. They plan to build a feature into all their font-editing products which will allow type designers to save information about the EULA in an abstract form. Further, all Fontlab products will have a EULA interpreter which will automatically display the EULA abstract to the user whenever a font is opened.
Font managers
- Suitcase
- From Extensis.
- FontAgent
- From Insider Software.
Font customers
The best introduction to the customer viewpoint is this article by Tiffany Wardle, first published in Interrobang 2 (Society of Typographic Aficionados 2004): “The Case for a User-Friendly EULA”