[Openfontlibrary] new release of the Ubuntu titling font

[Karl Berry]

    whether they're really Free since according to the license you can't 
    redistribute or modify since you don't have any source code...

That seems like an unwarranted conclusion to me.  Anyone can release
anything under the GPL (or anything else), if they own the rights to it
-- that's nothing about the GPL, it's a basic fact of copyright law.
Ipso facto, it is legal to modify/redistribute/rerelease it starting
from what was released, since the GPL gives you those rights; given that
no better form of the source is available, it becomes the source.

Anyway, in general, no argument that a font is more than the basic glyph
shapes, and the "preferred form" of the source is highly desirable.
However, I still don't think releasing font outlines is comparable to
releasing a compiled binary.  The font information that is always
present in a ttf or pfb or whatever is a lot more
accessible/retrievable/usable than anything you can do with object code.

I have never seen an interpretation of any free software license that
says that independent "scaffolding" such as build scripts have to be
released.  That's never been the intent, and I don't think such an
interpretation would hold up.

karl