[MPEG-OTSPEC] Acknowledging sources

[Simon Cozens]

On 15/08/2020 19:49, Peter Constable wrote:
> The fact that OT includes CBDT, SVG, sbix tables as well as COLR is 
> clearly not because MS only incorporated into OT things that it claimed 
> as its own.

I think you have missed the point of what I am saying. (The short 
version is in the subject.) Yes, others have contributed and wrote major 
portions of the MSOT spec, but nowhere are they credited. The result of 
that is that what appears to the world to be Microsoft's spec - and what 
Microsoft clearly thinks of as "Microsoft's spec" - is, in reality, full 
of other people's unacknowledged good ideas. I suggest that it would be 
good for us, *and also for Microsoft culturally*, to acknowledge that 
reality.
> Is there legacy cruft that could be dispensed with? Absolutely. But IMO 
> it’s not at all fair to say that MS or any other company is to be blamed 
> for that cruft persisting.
 > ...
 > There are plenty of innovations and improvements I’d earnestly like to
 > see in font formats and text layout. But IMO the biggest problem
 > impeding progress is collective industry inertia, not any one company.

The company which jealously gatekeeps spec changes *absolutely* bears 
responsibility for when the spec doesn't change. If you genuinely want 
that responsibility to be shared across the industry, then let's do this 
properly.

S