[OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances

[Dave Crossland]

Hi,

More licensing curmudgeon-ry from me I'm afraid :-)

A new OSI approved font license is out, the Japanese "IPA Font License":

    http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html

The OFLB is only going to run with the most popular free font
licenses, to encourage license consolidation, so I doubt the OFLB will
accept IFL fonts anyway.

So, if you're not interested in font licensing, please note the
existence of the license and mark this thread as read :-)

I wonder if the story of its creation will be published to the same
extent that the SIL OFL process has been documented; I guess that
there was some kind of wrestling match between proprietary-minded font
developers and freedom-minded customers.

Some of the history is revealed with a quick search: Bruce Perens has
been helpfully guiding the drafts of this -
http://perens.com/blog/?s=open+font - although, sadly, his original
objections which I share about only distributing derived versions as
"diff" files - http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:516:200902:ahjoeececbbcpiajppfi
- apply to the final OSI approved license.

Although I'm happy some Japanese fonts are being released with an OSI
approved license, this diff requirement makes it a very poor license
IMO. The draft Perens linked to at
http://ipafont.ipa.go.jp/enduser_license_draft090304.pdf has the
makings of a much better license, and is probably only interesting to
me so I'll skip over my thoughts about it here.

However, the key thing about the license is that it (appears to) patch
the "PDF loophole" that Perens claims the SIL OFL has at
http://perens.com/blog/2009/02/17/64/

    "loophole that would allow the conversion of any font under the
license to public domain"

OFL S5: "he Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in
whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not
be distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to
remain under this license does not apply to any document created using
the Font Software."
- http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL_web

IFL S2.4: "In the case of a Digital Document File containing Embedded
Fonts created by embedding such fonts to the extent allowed under this
Agreement, the Recipient may conduct Reproduction and Other
Exploitation of the Digital Document File, without requiring the
Recipient of such Digital Document File to comply with this Agreement.
 For the avoidance of doubt, such Recipient may not create and conduct
Reproduction and Other Exploitation of a Derived Program from such
Digital Document File except according to the terms of this
Agreement."
- http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html

I hope this will help in the updating of the GNU GPL Font Exception :-)

Cheers
Dave