Along with the stix license, there were a few questions asked about the OFL license as well. We visited the license a while ago, but never really came to a complete conclusion on it one way or another. Attached is the license again for reference, along with my own analysis of it. Don Armstrong -- If I had a letter, sealed it in a locked vault and hid the vault somewhere in New York. Then told you to read the letter, thats not security, thats obscurity. If I made a letter, sealed it in a vault, gave you the blueprints of the vault, the combinations of 1000 other vaults, access to the best lock smiths in the world, then told you to read the letter, and you still can't, thats security. -- Bruce Schneier http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
This Font Software is Copyright (c) <dates>, <copyright holder> (<mainURL>). All Rights Reserved. Copyright (c) <dates>, <additional copyright holder> (<mainURL>). <Font Name> is a Reserved Font Name for this Font Software. <Additional Font Name> is a Reserved Font Name for this Font Software. This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.0. No modification of the license is permitted, only verbatim copy is allowed. This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL ----------------------------------------------------------- SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.0 - 22 November 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------- PREAMBLE The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of cooperative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide an open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others. The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and sold with any software provided that the font names of derivative works are changed. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of license. DEFINITIONS "Font Software" refers to any and all of the following: - font files - data files - source code - build scripts - documentation "Reserved Font Name" refers to the Font Software name as seen by users and any other names as specified after the copyright statement. "Standard Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed by the Copyright Holder. "Modified Version" refers to any derivative font software made by adding to, deleting, or substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the components of the Standard Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a new environment. "Author" refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical writer or other person who contributed to the Font Software. PERMISSION & CONDITIONS Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following conditions: 1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Standard or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself. 2) Standard or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and sold with any software, provided that each copy contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user. 3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font Name(s), in part or in whole, unless explicit written permission is granted by the Copyright Holder. This restriction applies to all references stored in the Font Software, such as the font menu name and other font description fields, which are used to differentiate the font from others. 4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder or the Author(s) of the Font Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder and the Author(s) or with their explicit written permission. 5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed using this license, and may not be distributed under any other license. TERMINATION This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are not met. DISCLAIMER THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.
First off; while I am a Debian Developer, and do have some experience
in auditing licenses for DFSG compliance, I can't make any claims one
way or another as to whether software licensed under such a license
will be acceptable for inclusion in main (main being the part of the
Debian archive where software that is actually a part of the Debian
distribution is kept; contrib and non-free are distributed by Debian,
but are not part of the distribution. All works in main are believed
to satisfy the DFSG.) That responsibility lies with the ftp-masters, a
group of Debian Developers who are responsible for the content of the
archive.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy,
merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and
unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following
conditions:
1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual
components, in Standard or Modified Versions, may be sold by
itself.
This is likely to be DFSG free, as anyone can trivially bundle the
font with something else that can be sold and sell it. However, adding
this sort of clause to the license, especially in light of the clause
above, where we are granted "Permission [..] to [...] sell modified
and unmodified copies of the font software." This dissonance is rather
peculiar.
3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved
Font Name(s), in part or in whole, unless explicit written
permission is granted by the Copyright Holder. This restriction
applies to all references stored in the Font Software, such as
the font menu name and other font description fields, which are
used to differentiate the font from others.
Limited naming restrictions are permitted by DFSG §4. However, the
naming restriction above is significantly more broad than the naming
restriction that DFSG §4 was written to allow. (Earlier versions of
the LaTeX Project Public License required renaming the filenames of
modified versions so that they wouldn't conflict; that restriction has
since been removed.) As such, it's likely that this clause will
restrict the inclusion of works which have Reserved Font Names in
Debian.
Beyond the mere DFSG Freeness issues of this clause, it also has a few
practical problems, as "in part or in whole" appears to preclude the
use of any part of the font name in a derivative version. [Taken to an
insane extreme, if the font was named 'abc', a derivative 'bad' would
contain the name in part, thus violating the license.] Nathanael
Nerode pointed this out as well in the discussion on debian-legal in
December.[1]
5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in
whole, must be distributed using this license, and may not be
distributed under any other license.
While not necessary for DFSG compliance, this clause makes the
inclusion of the font in any GPLed work impossible.
Anyway, as you can see there is basically one problematic clause for
inclusion in Debian, and a few other minor issues that should probably
be resolved before font authors start using this license. [I'd like to
strongly suggest as well that font authors should consider using an
existing license with well known ramifications, like the GPL or the
MIT license instead of a license like this which is less battle
tested.]
1: <200512172255.55099.neroden@twcny.rr.com>
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