[WMASTERS] Copyrights

[George Hart <ghart@socrates.berkeley.edu>]

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Boy am I confused.  Is it really possible for someone to copyright a font
encoding scheme (i.e. what ASCII slot what Tamil glyph fits in)?  I'm
certain it is not -- in fact, I don't think it's even possible to copyright
a font (i.e. graphic encoding of the symbols using Fontographer or
whatever).  Could someone clear this up?

In any event, for a standard, we need something that is CLEARLY and WITHOUT
QUESTION in the public domain.  I would certainly refuse to use anything
that involved getting permission from someone else, even if its use were
free.  Nor would I use any standard that had restrictions applied to it
(e.g. "Can only be used for personal use").  We need a standard that can be
used freely for both commercial and private purposes.

This is absolutely critical and nonnegotiable.  GH

PS Obviously, if someone wishes to develop a proprietary editor or
word-processor using the standard and sell it, that's a different matter --
I would encourage such enterprise.




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