The Fabricatorz recently capped off an exciting and eventful week at the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting, in Montreal. The 4-day Conference was packed with developers and users of free software including Inkscape, Scribus, Gimp, Blender, DeviantArt, and many more. Developer Brad Phillips closed out the Day One talks with a guide to making our unique avatars, as well as announcing the Release of Open Clip Art Library 3.0.

As the talks rolled into Day Two, Christopher Adams revealed the highly-anticipated, refreshed Open Font Library, to much adulation.

The hits kept coming through Day Four, when Fabricatorz Founder, Jon Phillips, unveiled the Milkymist video synthesizer, alongside a vision of an open hardware future for LGM.

The Fabricatorz want to send out a big thanks to all involved in organizing and hosting events for this year’s Libre Graphics Meeting. More great events and Releases lay ahead, as we look forward to the rest of 2011!

Montreal, May 13, 2011- More than 200 active developers, artists, and attendees of the 6th Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 in Montreal were able to see the Milkymist One video synthesizer (http://milkymist.org) live for the first time, to entertain and surprise them between talks and during breaks. Real-time video synthesis with audio and video input had been available before in proprietary packages combining multiple devices and costing several thousand USD. Milkymist One combines this into a small form factor, and uses only free software and free hardware acceleration.

“The Milkymist One is the future of live performance and is the real freedom box, available now. Without a truly open hardware architecture, developers working on free and open software are going to be locked out from the future of development,” said Jon Phillips, Fabricatorz Founder and Qi Hardware Co-founder. “I am extremely proud to use the Milkymist One live at the event, and explain why its so important for the future of Libre Graphics.”

Phillips is giving a final keynote presentation at LGM2011 where he is presenting the future of Libre Graphics, moving from developers on desktop systems they control, to network services outward towards embedded hardware for making graphics.

Later that night, Milkymist One will be featured during the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 closing ceremony in Montreal at an event called Geepsters.

The Milkymist project is an informal organization of people and companies who develop, manufacture and sell a comprehensive open source solutions (http://qi-hardware.com) for the live synthesis of interactive visual effects for video performance artists, clubs and musicians. The project goes great lengths to apply the open source principles at every level possible, and is best known for the Milkymist system-on-chip (SoC) which is among the first commercialized system-on-chip designs with free HDL source code. Several Milkymist technologies have been reused in applications unrelated to video synthesis, such as NASA’s Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed (CoNNeCT).

Milkymist One is currently available in limited quantities to early adopters, and will be available later this summer for general use, at a target price of 499 USD.

Montreal, May 12, 2011 – At the 6th Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 in Montreal, the Open Font Library, the Open Font Library community and Fabricatorz launch an online library of fonts that all type designers and font enthusiasts may participate in. The goal of the Open Font Library is to offer great fonts, help designers share their work, accelerate the usage of the @font-face tag available in modern web browsers, and to help educate everyone about how to design and use fonts.

The Font Library website is under active development, with the mission to bring online a veritable library of fonts to be made available under free licenses, including the SIL Open Font License, Creative Commons Zero license, and the GPLv3 with font exception license.

Fabricatorz developer Christopher Adams led the development of the site on the company’s Aiki Framework. “Today marks a crucial milestone in the lifetime of the Open Font Library, from its initial conception in 2006 to its finalized public release in 2011,” said Adams. “Our goal for the Font Library is not only to assemble a large collection of fonts, but to highlight quality free fonts and help others get involved in making this the best public library of fonts.”

The Open Font Library received sponsorship and direction from Dave Crossland. Other major contributors to the project include Alexandre Prokoudine, Ben Weiner, Ed Trager, Eric Schrijver, James Weiner, Jon Phillips, Nicolas Spalinger, and Robert Martinez, who developed the Open Font Library logo. Initial patrons to the project include Mozilla Foundation, River Valley Technologies, TeX Users Group and Yes Logic. The Font Library has also benefited tremendously from input by participants at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011.

The Open Font Librarians and the Fabricatorz, the global open production company, are actively seeking sponsorship and contracts to support the development of the Open Font Library towards a 1.0 release by the end of 2011. With sponsorship, there are active plans to integrate version control support for fonts on the site, allow for direct editing of fonts on the site, identify incomplete font designs and actively provide solutions, and integrate social web features into the project. More advanced features like API support for uploading and downloading fonts become possible for each additional patron who offers their support.

“The Fabricatorz stand ready to help build the world’s largest collection of fonts,” said Fabricatorz and Open Clip Art Library founder, Jon Phillips. With your support, use of the Library’s fonts, and spreading the news of the project, the Open Font LIbrary is certain to reach this goal.”

About Open Font Library

The mission of the Open Font Library (http://openfontlibrary.org) is to promote your freedom as it relates to fonts. All of the typefaces contained in the library are available under a free license, which gives you the freedom to use, study, remix and share each and every font. The site is powered by the Aiki Framework (http://aikiframework.org), a powerful web framework for building network services using the AGPL license.

About Fabricatorz

The Fabricatorz (http://fabricatorz.com) is a “open” production company that makes successful projects from start to finish, including development and community management. We specialize in Free and Open Source Software, Creative Commons technology, growing on-line and off-line communities in San Francisco, China and the Arab World. Our core focus is in developing software using Aiki Framework, hardware using Qi Hardware, and community-building around the philosophies of Sharism.

For More Information

• http://openfontlibrary.org
• http://aikiframework.org
• http://fabricatorz.com

Press Contact

Christopher Adams
press@fabricatorz.com
+1.415.830.3884
San Francisco + China

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