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Re: Licence Question for ttf fonts



On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 11:28:53PM +0100, Erich Schubert wrote:
> The biggest Problem is the sentence "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed,
> not sold." i think.

This is a legal fiction -- though it happens to be one that even Free
Software licensors attempt to use to their advantage -- so I don't think
it's particularly problematic.

Since your package would be going in non-free anyway, I suggest you just
let CD vendors and so forth worry about it.  There are plenty of other
packages in non-free they have to scrutinize anyway.

> - You may modify your copy or copies of the fonts or any portion of it,
>   provided that you also meet all of these rules:
> 
> 	a) Do not alter in any way alphamumerics(eq. a-z, 1-9) contained in the
> 	font. An exception is converting between formats, here is allowed the
> 	nominal distortion that occurs during conversion from second order to
> 	third order quadratic curves (TrueType to Postscript) and vice versa.
> 
> 	b) Extra characters may be added, here it is allowed to use curves from
> 	alphanumerics in fonts under same license.
> 
> 	c) It is allowed to modify and remove analpahbetics (punctuation,
> 	special characters, ligatures and symbols).
> 
> 	d) The original font name must remain but can be augmented. (ie.  Blue
> 	Highway Cyrillic, Blue Highway ANSI, Blue Highway Fudge)
> 
> 	e) Character mapping may be altered.
> 
> 	f) If the kerning information is damaged or discarded please state that
> 	in the user notes or documentation.
> 
> 	g) All modifications must be released under this license.

Actually, his license isn't that far from a Free Software license.  I
get the feeling that a blend of some of the requirements of the GNU GPL,
plus some aspects of the Apache Software License and/or Artistic License
may actually accomplish the goals he seeks *and* qualify his font(s) as
Free Softwre.

But, to answer your question, the license doesn't look like a problem
for non-free.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |
Debian GNU/Linux                   |           //     // //  /     /
branden@debian.org                 |           EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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