[Openfontlibrary] Font File Type and Admins?

[Karl Berry]

    I don't think the
    right to embed the GPL fonts is clearly spelled out anywhere.

Yes it is.  The URW license explicitly adds this permission on top of
the GPL.  For example,
http://tug.org/tex-archive/fonts/urw/base35/uagd.pfb says:

% Copyright (URW)++,Copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development
% (URW)++,Copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development
% See the file COPYING (GNU General Public License) for license conditions.
% As a special exception, permission is granted to include this font
% program in a Postscript or PDF file that consists of a document that
% contains text to be displayed or printed using this font, regardless
% of the conditions or license applying to the document itself.

(Actually, the restriction to a "Postscript" or "PDF" document could
conceivably be problematic (what about an openoffice file, say), not to
mention the misspelling of PostScript, but anyway, the intent is clear.)

There is a similar "font licensing exception" text on gnu.org.

    commercial use of the fonts would have to be paid for, that's fine
    with me, but doesn't seem to me to quite qualify as "free." 

Definitely not.  If our goal is free-as-in-freedom fonts, that can be
included in free-as-in-freedom GNU/Linux/TeX/whatever distributions,
propositions like "no commercial usage" or "unrestricted usage but no
modification" cannot be accepted.

karl