[Xorg] Re: [Fontconfig] adding/distributing new fonts

[Jim Gettys]

There are several issues here that need discussion:

 1) licensing.  What licences are acceptable for redistribution
by X.org?  Our informal guideline has been we're trying to get
X to a fully DFSG distribution; not everything in the X
distribution currently meets this requirement (including
some fonts, e.g. Luicidux), but I don't  
think we want to increase the problem.  We (the X.org foundation)
need to formalize a statement in this area and get it up on
our web site.

 2) packaging.  We have a goal of this being the last "monolithic"
release of X (future releases being split up into smaller pieces
and autotooled, rather than the traditional "giant tarball from
hell" that X has become).  Adding yet more to then be repackaged
seems wrong...

At this date, adding things to the monolithic tree (with a release
a few weeks off) seems like a bad idea; destabilizing the build
is not a good idea.

So here's a concrete suggestion to avoid everything getting
stuck on these issues, while discussion goes on:

a) package the fonts (using autotools) to install directories
in /usr/share/fonts (only X specific fonts should go into the X
specific font directories).

b) We'd like to see the copyright holder's license for each
font (family) for discussion.

We can then, if every one agrees, add these packages to what we
distribute as separate packages to the pending release.  
This also means the aggregate licensing state of the core X
distribution would not be changing something many of us
feel is very important to maintain trust with previous
contributors.

                          - Jim




On Mon, 2004-08-09 at 07:37, Edward G.J. Lee wrote:
> Hello Danilo,
> 
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004, Danilo ??egan wrote:
> > Hi Edward,
> > 
> > Today at 11:22, Edward G. J. Lee wrote:
> > 
> > >   But I don't think it's easy to add more characters, because
> > >   we don't have another free fonts and APL is not GPL compatible.
> > 
> > There're many excellent free fonts.  You can start with URW-CYR (35
> > faces), Computer Modern Unicode (CM Unicode, another couple of dozen
> > faces, all based on Knuth's magnificient Computer Modern family of
> > typefaces ;), Bitstream Vera, ... There're other free fonts for
> > non-Latin/Cyrillic based scripts, but I don't know much about them
> > (except that they exist :).
> 
>   The problem is the license, URW fonts license under GNU GPL
>   AFAIK. But APL is not GPL compatible. :(
>   
>   Anyway, we have another MBE Arphic font project by Arne Goetje,
>   maybe will have more characters.
>   
>   Currently it fully supports the following charsets:
>   
>   ISO8859-1,2,3,4,7,9,10,13,14,15
>   Big5
>   GB2312-80
>   Modern Bopomofo Extensions for Hakka, Minnan
>   
>   Partly support is implemented for:
>   
>   HKSCS
>   CNS 11643
>   GB18030
> 
>   http://debian.linux.org.tw/pub/3Anoppix/people/arne/
> 
> 
> 
> Edward
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