[OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances

[Christopher Fynn]

Ed Trager wrote:
...
> 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.

Many widely used Japanese digital fonts have been made under government 
sponsorship. Since some of these are available free of cost, and the 
government calculates one day per glyph as average the time taken to 
make these fonts, it is not surprising that there are not many FLOSS 
alternatives of comparable quality. Few people can afford to devote that 
sort of time to developing a Japanese font with a large glyph set unless
someone is paying them to do it.


- Chris