Re: Licence for free ttf fonts - open source enough?

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

> I fear that "no derivative works" is a fatal kriteria, isn't it?
> (the adding of accents etc. is ok)
> Might there be an exception for artwork? (well... i would consider
> source code artwork, too ;) And fonts are somewhat source code for the
> ttf interpreter...)
> But 2 a) ist the only non-free Part of the Licence, isn't it?
> 
> Please reply to me soon, so i can tell the author that in order to be
> included with Debian, he'd had to allow the creation of derived works
> under the same licence as his original fonts.

Why don't you ask him why he won't allow the alphanumerics to be
altered?  If it is just that he doesn't want people to make them ugly,
and thus reflect badly on him, them he can put in a clause where
derived works must be given a different name.  Unfortunately, It
sounds a little like he wants people to get improved fonts from him,
for a fee.  There may not be a way to free these fonts.

Other than the modifcations part, I don't see any problem with the
fonts going into main.  They can certainly go into non-free as is.

It's a shame, since there do seem to be a number of good fonts there.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu