[OpenFontLibrary] GPL fonts! (Was: Open Font Library submissions)

[Dave Crossland]

2008/11/10 Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org>:
>    I think requiring the font exception would be ideal - ie, removing the
>    2nd category above.
>
> FWIW, I don't agree.  I liked your earlier conception much better: if
> it's under a free software license, it can be in OFLB.  For one thing,
> it makes for a much simpler decision process than "we accept free
> licenses a, b, c, but not d, e, and f".  What basis is there to exclude
> some?

I'm kinda neutral on this issue; as Nicolas Spalinger just said on ##font IRC,

19:07 < yosch> if you put yourself in the shoes of a end-user, you choose
               something in the font menu type away, print to pdf and Pff your
               content is licensed under a software license

but then again, my libertarian streak says, well, as long as we
signpost the dangers of such fonts, it would be okay to host such
fonts.

So, I think as policy we should accept all FSF-free licenses, but have
a moderation queue for anything other than PD, OFL and
GPL-as-we-prefer. That would channel people into best practices
without limiting the range of fonts in the library or nannying.

> It is possible a font designer would *choose* to license under GPL
> without font exception.  Not that I know of any actual examples, it's
> always just been ignorance, but it's conceivable.

Yes. The GPLv3 says on its first line it is "for software and other
kinds of works." And there are plenty of free culture advocates who
say GPL is suitable for FAIF cultural works, like software manuals,
because strong copyleft is missing from almost all other common free
culture licenses. I think the FDL is a strong copyleft license, but
now that v1.3 is CC-BY-SA compatible, I'm not so sure.

>    the largest collection I know of are the URW fonts that are
>    distributed as part of Ghostscript, which predate the "font
>    exception."
>
> A form of the GPL font exception appears in the PFB's of most of the URW
> font packages I have seen, although whether it was legally added, I
> don't know.

Okay. I'm willing to trust Aladdin if they added it. Depends how much
we can tell about when it was added.... Hmm...

> Aladdin and URW don't answer on these topics, in my
> experience :(.

We'll see if the GUST team have any luck.

-- 
Regards,
Dave

"Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers
and deluge the hobby market with good software."
- Bill Gates, 1976, in want of www.gnuherds.org