Re: Preparation of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 (II)
At Wed, 19 Nov 2003 19:08:24 +0100,
Martin Schulze wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > I'm not sure there's any reason to believe that there are licensing
> > problems with these fonts.
> >
> > The official reply from Hitachi on this question, as posted at
> > <http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200310/msg00323.html>,
> > seems quite unambiguous: they acknowledge that there are no laws on the
> > books, in Japan or elsewhere, which give them grounds to claim that
> > these fonts infringe their intellectual property rights. Rather, they
> > have referenced previous out-of-court settlements as precedent. Unless
> > Japanese law is created in a much different manner than it is in the
> > rest of the world, the results of out-of-court settlements do not
> > constitute legal precedents; they may provide insight into the legal
> > counsel's assessment of their chances of winning a suit, but there are
> > other factors that contribute to such an assessment besides the letter
> > of the law -- most notably, the respective depths of the parties'
> > pockets.
> >
> > I don't believe that Debian should ingratiate itself to corporations who
> > throw their weight around to carve out intellectual property without the
> > sanction of the courts. Unless and until Hitachi is taking legal action
> > against our distributors or users in Japan, I think Debian ought to
> > ignore these apparently baseless claims.
So you expose our debian users to font right war. It's not fair and
admirable attitude.
In Japan, making fonts need a lot of money. There are font market.
Font vendor claims such infringement. Font right is difficult
problem, but AFAIK in Japan there is a precedent that said not to
sell a pirated fonts.
In addition, font right is like "design right", not intellectual
property.
> So... the situation won't be changed for r2 and we can discuss this
> for r3.
Please replace the newer package which have been queue in r3. Keep in
mind that ttf-kochi-* fonts are widely used in Japan.
Regards,
-- gotom
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