Well, it would help for there to be links to the two documents please.
The SIL licence is, I think, this one.
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page ... rsi&id=OFL
I am unsure as to which is the GNU licence for fonts.
Perhaps I can widen the discussion a little, whilst still including the SIL licence and the GNU licence and set down some of my thoughts.
Some years ago I thought that it would be good to try to get some of my fonts taken up by a couple of major font distributers.
This was partly to try to earn some money from the fonts but largely so that I could achieve that standing as a font designer.
I will not pretend that the money would not have been nice to receive but I was not expecting it to be much, maybe £20 a year or so, my thinking was more that I could buy a book with the money and that I would then have the book as something that I had earned due to being a font designer: an intellectual satisfaction sort of thing.
Anyway, whilst not disguising the fact that one major distributor did not wish to proceed with the font that I submitted, I did look at the rules that acceptance by various distributors would impose.
One wanted a fifteen year indemnity for legal costs if anyone made a claim that my font violated the "anyone"'s intellectual property rights.
It did not say a valid claim, it said a claim.
So it appeared to me that an unjustified claim that it cost lawyer's fees for the font distributor to refute might end up with me being required to pay those lawyer's fees. Maybe that was a correct interpretation or maybe I was unduly concerned. Maybe whatever.
Oh-oh! No way could I take that risk.
As to using a licence that is other than one that is your own, please consider which legal liabilities to which you may become exposed.
Some say about no liability other than in jurisdictions where such a liability cannot be excluded.
So where is that?
If someone were to use such a licence to licence a font, could it be argued that by using it the "someone" had accepted that his or her liability in those jurisdictions existed? I do not know the answer to that.
Also, have there been any legal cases involving the particular licence and have any legal precedents been set as to the meaning?
Another issue is what do you want to achieve by licensing your font?
One issue is that some (many? most?) businesses that use fonts will not use a font unless the business has an explicit licence for the font such that, in the event of being audited for using only licensed software, the business can produce a licence to show that it is licensed.
I am not involved in a business, yet I am very careful over which fonts I use.
For example, I use fonts supplied with Windows; fonts supplied with packages such as Serif PagePlus and a few packages; fonts with the SIL Open Font License; and my own fonts.
That is me using fonts each font within the terms of the specific licence under which it is issued, not me issuing a font with one of those licences.
Are you wanting to licence in return for money or so as to get your font widely used, or both?
I publish my fonts on the web and send copies to the British Library for legal deposit, publication being a necessary condition for legal deposit, though publication not necessarily being publication on the web.
I do not know how you feel about whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union or should leave the European Union. I am not asking you to say. I mention this to ask how you would feel if your font was used by the people having the other view in the publicising of that choice for the referendum that is supposed to be going to be held.
If that happened, would it bother you?
What other views do you have: this is just to ask you to consider in relation to possible uses of your font, I am not asking you to say.
I think that some of the licences explicitly require that no restriction on the opinions expressed using the font are made. Would you be happy to licence like that?
Just some thoughts as a contribution to the discussion: I hope that you, or anyone else, do not mind me widening the discussion about licensing. Licensing seems to me to be a very difficult issue, possibly with different answers or indeed no answer available depending upon why someone is producing fonts and wanting to publish them.
William Overington
28 September 2015