[OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances

[Ed Trager]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>
>
> Le Lun 6 avril 2009 21:54, Dave Crossland a écrit :
>
>> 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.
>
> I doubt anyone but the IPA people will use it, it is overly
> restrictive and makes it impractical to use anything but the original
> font. It's a very convoluted way to say "free to use but not modify)

Exactly.

I am guessing that the story behind this is that there are very few
FLOSS Japanese fonts, and the ones clearly available for inclusion in
Linux distributions until now are considered unsatisfactory.

People have for a long time considered the IPA fonts better, but the
vagueness of the original IPA license, available only in Japanese,
made it impossible for the vendors to include with Linux
distributions.

I know that Mike Fabian at SuSE, who happens to know Japanese, tried
for a long time to get clarification on the license.  So now I guess
this newly published IPA Font License in English finally clears the
way for inclusion of the IPA fonts in Linux distributions ...