Re: Is "IPA Font license" DFSG-Free?

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@gmail.com>]

2009/5/31 Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org>:
> Le dimanche 31 mai 2009 à 20:52 +0900, Hideki Yamane a écrit :
>>  I've ITPed IPAfont as otf-ipafont package.
>
>>  You can see its license at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html
>>  Please give me your feedback (Please add CC to me). Thanks.
>
> The only things that looks suspicious are the name change clauses.
>
> For derived works:
>        No one may use or include the name of the Licensed Program as a
>        program name, font name or file name of the Derived Program.
>
> And for redistribution without modification:
>        The Recipient may not change the name of the Licensed Program.
>

This is a long standing tradition within TeX to prevent namespace
collision. Back in the old days it was important that if you modify
and release something and you are not the original author you have to
change the name of the package such that you don't break the
compatability with all the TeX documents in the wild. This clause
comes from (off top of my head) the LaTeX license which FSF declared
as GPL incompatible due to this renaming forcing clause.

TeXLive is in Debian and a lot of it is license under Latex license so
that bit is DFSG-free but the example above is self-contradicting. I
think the author intended to use the Latex license instead.

See

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

The Latex Project Public License 1.2

--

And my new disclaimer ITDODLLAS = I Think Disclaimers On Debian Legal
List Are Silly

-- 
With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич