On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 08:16:27PM +0800, Andrew Lee wrote: > On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, Ming Hua wrote: > >But Firefly's pixmap fonts are under GPL. And Arphic license is NOT GPL > >compatible. Since we can't do anything about Arphic fonts, the only > >reasonable solution would to be firefly dual-licensing his pixmap fonts > >under APL/GPL, or put it under a more unrestrictive BSD-like license. > > I guess Firefly doesn't understand the APL and GPL, so that's why he > did such big mistake. > > I think we should correct Firefly's pixmap fonts are still under APL. There is no way _we_ can correct Firefly's pixmap font. GPL requires all derived work to be GPL, too. The only way to solve this license conflict is to persuade Firefly to change the license on dual-license his pixmap work. > >I think Funda Wang raised this issue in Firefly's forum, but didn't get > >a definitive answer. If I am missing something, pointers will be > >appreciated. > > I don't know what you guy asked and what he answered, but for my > experience, Firefly doesn't read any English. You guy should probably > write to him by Chinese for a better answer. :p The discussion was in Firefly's own forum, and it is in Chinese: http://firefly.idv.tw/test/Forum.php?Board=1&Article=0af9dd818093d712288ad530d7767fb5&Func=view&History=0 Reading this thread, my impression is that Firefly isn't interested in license himself, and I suspect (with all respect) he doesn't know much about license issues. > So now we have three situations: > 1) Firefly fonts > Unclear License Statements. Exactly. Firefly claims his pixmap fonts to be under GPL. However he is distributing the ``firefly new sung'' font including Arphic's vectorized fonts and his pixmap fonts. This is in violation of both APL and GPL. Such a font is undistributable, let alone in Debian. > 2) Current CJKUnifonts > APL > 3) Future CJKUnifonts(embedded Firefly's pixmap fonts) > APL How can we achieve this without persuading Firefly? > I don't see any problem for packaging CJKUnifonts even after merged > Firefly's pixmap fonts, that are still under APL. You can't take Firefly's GPLed pixmap fonts and relicense it under APL unless Firefly relicense it. This is in violation of GPL. > >It may be not a big issue (I don't think Arphic is going to sue anybody > >on these fonts), but the DFSG is important in Debian, so please consider > >this when packaging. > > The GNU web site said APL are still a free software license, please see > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html > > Arphic Public License > This is a copyleft free software license, incompatible with > the GPL. Its normal use is for fonts, and in that use, the > incompatibility does not cause a problem. Yes I am aware that APL is DFSG-free. I was talking that a font mixed of APL and GPL parts is _undistributable_. I know in this case the upstream author doesn't care about license, but it's a Debian maintainer's resposibility to check these issues. If necessary, I can write a mail in Chinese to Firefly (I hope he reads simplified Chinese). But I hope the maintainer who proposed ITP is aware of this issue. And since I had no contact with Firefly before, it's probably better for someone else he knows to raise this issue to him. After all, many developers hate license issues. I hope I made myself clear. Regards, Ming 2005.02.19
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