namecheck.fontdata.com site is down creating error
Opened this issue · 3 comments
Observed behaviour
The fontdata_namecheck giving following error
ERROR
Failed to access: http://namecheck.fontdata.com/. This check relies on the external service http://namecheck.fontdata.com/ via the internet. While the service cannot be reached or does not respond this check is broken
on checking I found that the site is down for weeks
Expected behaviour
Like fontbakery maintains a cached data of vendor_id from https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx, a similar cached data of font names should be maintained at fontnakery server to check against.
Well... this database is (as far as I can tell) currently kept private.
@davelab6, do I recall correctly that you talked to the maintainer of namecheck.fontdata.com in the past, regarding hosting a cache of the database on a public repo? I do not remember exactly what was their response to that request.
Instead of relying on private data of an individual, it is better googlefonts should maintain its own data of copyrighted fonts curated through Google search, so that a font name with same name as a copyrighted commercial font does not get included in Google font causing legal issues.
To be a bit more precise, this is not a matter of Google Fonts policy exclusively, but instead it is a general one. This check belongs to the Universal profile as it is useful for everyone. Nobody wants to release a new font reusing a preexisting family name.