4 ms·

y...yes? they should use an appropriate license

• jfoster 6y ago
  It's incredible that one of the biggest companies in the world can't manage to appropriately license their stuff. Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. I imagine they could've chosen it for license simplicity & compatibility reasons, but again, if they just wanted these to be used as widely as possible, they could've just gone CC0.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. Fonts are code. And very often have a clear source vs. object form.
• throwaway3699 6y ago
  All Google is saying is don't scam others by reselling the same stuff that is freely available. Licensing it under something more restrictive (or custom) would make this a non-starter for other companies to reuse or remix.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Not every undesirable behavior can be blocked by firm rules without catching non-problematic behavior. Using a license which that errs on the side of being permissive rather than restrictive at the boundary and using social pressure to try to mitigate undesirable behavior in that boundary area seems a reasonable approach. (True for law, too, and lots of other domains.) There's some domains where you need to (given that perfect calibration is unattainable) err on the side of being restrictive, but that's definitely not always the right choice.