Re: Font license recommendation

[Lars Hellström <Lars.Hellstrom@math.umu.se>]

On 08 Aug 2002 15:37:29 -0700, tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote:
>Lars Hellström  <Lars.Hellstrom@math.umu.se> writes:
>
>> In a broad sense of intent perhaps, but I got clear impression Thomas had
>> something much more concrete and close in mind.
>
>The GPL applies to anything that counts as a derivative work, with
>some explicit exceptions (mere aggregation, for example).
>
>The copyright law itself (as nearly every law) considers intent to be
>of cardinal importance when considering cases of contributory
>infringment, and since the GPL reaches just as far as copyright,
>intent therefore matters in deciding where the GPL's conditions attach.

OK, this makes sense. It was something more concrete, but working at a
different level.

Whereas this in principle could affect the inclusion-of-font-in-PS matter,
I doubt that it will in practice. It does however seem to me that this
aspect has a direct application to another matter, namely that of tarballs.
Jeff claimed in our discussion regarding the LPPL that, as I understood it
a general principle, tarballs automatically become derived works of
whatever is stored in them and that any license conditions for derived
works would automatically attach themselves to the tarball. (In particular:
if some file in the tarball has a "rename before modify" condition then
that would apply to the tarball as a whole and thus, I suspect, the tarball
would have to be renamed whenever anything was added to or removed from
it.) The above principle of intent seems, at least to me, to void that
argument. As long as there is no intent to use the tarball in any but the
normal ways then the conditions concerning derived works do not attach to
it. Instead the conditions attached to the tarball (at least this is what I
would expect as default conditions, if nothing else is said) should be that
whatever is produced by extracting the contents of the tarball in the most
common way satisfies the conditions for the files that have been put into
the tarball.

Lars Hellström