On 10/06/14 14:07, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
2014-06-10 07:07, Christian PERRIER wrote:Let's first decide about Nafees Nastaleeq....Right. This is the license again: http://www.cle.org.pk/software/license/Nafees_Nastaleeq_License.html Basically it's an Expat license with a few restrictions: - You must rename the font if you modify it - While you are permitted to include the font in commercial software, you are not allowed to sell the font itself. - You may not use the names Nafees or CRULP in an advertising context without permission. So, would any of those restrictions prevent the font from being included in the Debian archive? Personally I think not.
One of the major issues lies with a clause referring explicitly to the GPL while the license itself not being the GPL. Basically the font embeddingclause is really messy: this font exception (lifted from the experimental font
exception designed to work with the GNU GPL) can be removed in downstream derivatives: users and publishers cannot be sure that derivative fonts explicitly allow embedding or not. The significant risk is that documents created using derivative fonts will have to be released under GPL because this font license propagates to the document itself which is an unintended but quite problematic side-effect. The consequence is that it breaks the trust users can put into the licensing if they can't be sure if they can embed the fonts or not in their documents. And - as Christian rightly pointed out - there are serious issues from a compatibility point of view to take into account. For example, the smart font code is stuck in a silo project-only license. Not so good for future maintainership and general efforts to move towards a more open buildpath. Debian and Ubuntu should not encourage but rather resist every well-meaning research institute around the world trying to cook up their own project-specific and incompatible license. I think it's well-worth for the benefit of Debian and Ubuntu users of this font (and the wider community) to continue to advocate for a re-relase by upstream under a community-recognized and DFSG-approved license instead. Thanks to all involved for their work on this :-) -- Nicolas