[Openfontlibrary] red hat liberation fonts

Fri May 11 06:06:10 PDT 2007

Dave Crossland wrote:
> On 11/05/07, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 19:14 -0100, Gustavo Ferreira wrote:
>>>>>> http://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/
>> I'm cc'ing Andy Fitzsimon and Jack Aboutboul to see who to connect with
>> at RedHat for trying to get them dual-licensed at least with Open Font
>> License
> 
> This would be ideal.

Thanks for doing that, Jon :)
Great to see more good efforts of RedHat in the area of fonts :)
Nice name too.

btw, the License URL and License fields in the fonts look like this:

License Info URL: http://www.ascendercorp.com/liberation.html
License Description: Use of this Liberation font software is subject to 
the license agreement under which you accepted the Liberation font software.

Sadly the link is 404 and the description isn't immensely useful.

I can see that the designer is Steve Matteson: 
http://www.ascendercorp.com/stevepage.html

> I'd really like to open a discussion with the people who were involved
> in the discussion that made this GPL decision, just to hear their
> thoughts on font licensing in general, and why the decision to GPL
> was made in this case.

Yes, I'd love to get their views of the subject too.

Note that it's GPL + 2 exceptions:

(a)As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this 
font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the 
document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to 
be covered by the GNU General Public License.  This exception does not 
however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered 
by the GNU General Public License.  If you modify this font, you may 
extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not 
obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception 
statement from your version.
(b)As a further exception, any distribution of the object code of the 
Software in a physical product must provide you the right to access and 
modify the source code for the Software and to reinstall that modified 
version of the Software in object code form on the same physical product 
on which you received it.

This is what the FSF now says on the subject on the license-list:
"The GNU GPL can be used for fonts. However, note that it does not 
permit embedding the font in a document unless that document is also 
licensed under the GPL. If you want to allow this, use the font 
exception. See also this explanatory essay about the GPL Font Exception."

Not quite sure how to interpret precisely the second exception...
IMHO this could use a README and a FAQ.

IMHO these two exceptions have some serious (unintended?) consequences.

> I'm not totally sure how lobbying for OFL switching here will be.
> 
>> and/or something less restrictive.
> 
> I'd say that the OFL was more restrictive than the GPL.

In what way?

Unlike the GPL, the OFL does not require source redistribution (or the 
corresponding offer) but only encourages it via the OFL-FAQ. The 
restrictions are mainly on naming and selling bundles which are needed 
in the context of fonts but satisfy the Free Software Definition and the 
DFSG.

Hum, if you look at the Liberation license agreement, I'd say the OFL is 
much clearer in the context of fonts. (The Liberation agreement is a 
project and organisation-specific license which has not been reviewed 
outside of the originating organisation, apparently the Fedora Community 
is also learning about this now).

I think the GPL font exception can cause confusion.:

On http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException:
"This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the 
document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you 
modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the 
font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, 
delete this exception statement from your version.

I'm not sure "might, may, wish" really help make the model clear at all 
for user and designers :-(

>> Also, I would like to underline that GPL is for source code.
> 
> Well, its for _software_, which neccessarily has sourcecode;

True.

> if fonts
> are really software or not is open for debate, although I'm currently
> feeling more inclined that they are, and the GPL is suitable for
> fonts.

Various court cases have proved that they are software. I think they are 
both software and art. A different kind of software.

At least it' the FSF's analysis reflected in the dedicated section on 
their license-list:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses

Without the embedding exception I don't think the GPL is suitable for 
fonts, as it influences the document's license as the FSF acknowledges 
(IMHO that's going too far). And with the embedding exception it's less 
than ideal because the exception *can* be dropped in later modifications.

We really need to use licenses designed for content to cover documents.

> The language about distributing the build scripts and such is
> going to become more and more important as OpenType complexities
> become much more common.

Yes, and the OFL FAQ encourages "font source" which can include all that 
can be useful for a designer to contribute to an open font project or 
branch it  (build scripts, glyph databases, smarts source, hinting 
source, documentation, rendering samples, design guide, etc) to be 
distributed but the license itself does not require it. One reason was 
to take into account the fact not all the designers were ready to 
release everything or would be able to make use of certain types of 
sources. Making it a cultural best practise to encourage releasing as 
much useful font sources as possible is the best way forward IMHO. 
Requiring that would be going too far for many designers.

> The lack of automatic upgrade in OFL is also non-ideal, imHo, but its
> been discussed on ofl-discuss (and IRL :-) already :-)

Yes, and actually, we'd rather make it a conscious move for designers to 
license their creation under a specific version of the license.

OFL-FAQ 5.1 says:

Question: 5.1  I see that this is version 1.1 of the license. Will there 
be later changes?

Answer: Version 1.1 is the first minor revision of the OFL. We are 
confident that version 1.1 will meet most needs, but are open to future 
improvements. Any revisions would be for future font releases, and 
previously existing licenses would remain in effect. No retroactive 
changes are possible, although the Copyright Holder(s) can re-release 
the font under a revised OFL. All versions will be available on our web 
site: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL.

Now moving to an automatic upgrade clause would be going against this 
policy. We don't want that.

Looking forward to see where the RedHat and Fedora community can go with 
  the "liberation" of their fonts :)

PS: LGM was really amazing. It was great to see some of the OFLB members 
  there. Must do a write-up of all that has happened font-wise there. 
Great times ahead!

-- 
Nicolas Spalinger
http://scripts.sil.org
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-fonts/
https://launchpad.net/~fonts

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