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VFL, A license for your fellows!

We announced them earlier, here is our first NFO (Non-Font Object). This particular project is a new hybrid model of license created by our dear member Anton Moglia and now carried by the whole foundry. Welcome the Velvetyne Fellowship License!

Why another license?

As a graphic designer collaborating with other designers and creating fonts, I often need to share work-in-progresss creations with friends and collaborators. The problem is that, until now, I didn’t know how to control this practice. Sometimes, these creations (such as fonts) were shared without my knowledge and then I lost control of their distribution. I have occasionally seen my unreleased fonts reappear somewhere on the internet. How did these people get there? Friends of friends shared them seamlessly, since there was no license attached.

I thought it might be interesting to encourage this practice, and that it could energize the way people share fonts. “I can give you that font if you want! You can share it with your friends, it’s meant to be.”

So I realized that it might be a very good way to distribute some of the fonts that I had in my folders. The idea was born:  we can share some fonts, in a demo version, with friends. They can share them with their friends. It can give a little life to typefaces that would otherwise never be released. It’s also a way to get early usage examples of a font, which in turn can lead to more enthusiasm towards that font. The only restriction is that the files cannot be publicly released. It has to be something that is shared from hand to hand, like an old hacked movie on a USB drive.

So, what’s the deal?!

The Velvetyne Fellowship License allows you to make digital fonts and other creations available to your friends through peer-to-peer sharing. It encourages the distribution, within a defined framework, of any kind of digital creations, that otherwise would remain in designers’ folders. These creations can thus spread organically from one friend to another and can be used normally as long as they are not released on a public distribution platform.

This particular licence allows users to employ these creations in commercial and noncommercial projects alike. However, it prevents anyone to post the licensed creations on any website or online repository whatsoever. The only way to obtain their files would be from another fellow. This licence also allows modifications of the creation, but only after asking their original designer. In this sense, this licence is different from traditional open source and libre licences. Any modification can be shared afterwards as long as they are still under the Velvetyne Fellowship License.

It’s a distribution model in which each holder of the licenced creative files becomes in turn a distributor and guarantees their availability and conservation.

Why should I use it?

→ You produce digital creations in your free time, as part of your studies or a professional activity.

→ You would like to share them with friends, wether they are students, graphic designers, designers, architects or your family.

→ You are used to sharing ongoing creations with your personal and professional network, but you haven’t been able to control the distribution of these files by using a license.

The fellowship license is intended to help you manage this practice.

How to use the Fellowship License?

READ THE LICENSE

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO FOLDER

1. This repository contains a demo folder to help you create a structure which will contain your creation files and which you can then send to your friends.

2. This folder also contains the logo of the Velvetyne Fellowship Licence which must appear in the creation files to guarantee its authenticity.

3. If you share files published under this licence with a friend, feel free to briefly explain its specificity.