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Is the GUST-FONT-NOSOURCE-LICENSE free?



Hi,

this is an earnest question, the "NOSOURCE" in the name is misleading.
The license can be found at 

ftp://tug.ctan.org/pub/tex-archive/fonts/antt/doc/fonts/antt/GUST-FONT-NOSOURCE-LICENSE.txt

and is quite short:

%%% This is a preliminary version, barring acceptance from the LaTeX
%%% Project Team and other feedback, of the GUST Font Nosource License. 
%%% This licence is for use with free fonts distributed without source code,
%%% e.g., fonts created with visual tools.
%%%  
%%% For the most recent version of this license see
%%% http://www.gust.org.pl/fonts/licenses/GUST-FONT-NOSOURCE-LICENSE.txt or
%%% http://tug.org/fonts/licenses/GUST-FONT-NOSOURCE-LICENSE.txt
%
% This work may be distributed and/or modified under the
% conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3a
% of this license or (at your option) any later version provided that
% the following additional clauses will be observed:
%
% 1) As there is no universally relevant concept of source files,
%    no distinction is made between "Work" and "Compiled Work";
%    hence, the relevant clauses of the
%    LaTeX Project Public License should be interpreted accordingly.
% 2) Due to the nature of fonts, clause 6a of the LaTeX Project
%    Public License, version 1.3a, does not apply.  A later version of
%    the LaTeX Project Public License may number or word this clause
%    differently; it is the substance that is important.
% 3) It is requested, but not legally required, that derived works be
%    distributed only after changing the names of the fonts comprising 
%    this work and given in the accompanying file MANIFEST.txt, and that
%    the files comprising the Work, as listed in MANIFEST.txt also be
%    given new names. Any exceptions to this request are also
%    given in MANIFEST.txt.
%  
% The latest version of the LaTeX Project Public License is in
%   http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
% and version 1.3a or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
% version 2004/10/01 or later.

LPPL clause 6a is just a restriction in LPPL, which is waved for works
under the GUST... license, therefore the license is basically the same
as LPPL granting some additional rights.

Except for the source issue.  The concrete example, as you might have
guessed, are the ANTP fonts, which are available as PostScript Type1,
TrueType and OpenType fonts.

I have heard a talk of the author, Janusz Nowacki, last week at the
DANTE meeting, and I got the impression that in fact he uses FontForge
or a similar editor, and doesn't use its scripting facilities (much).

I'll ask him again, but it seems to me that in this case the PostScript
Outlines are in fact the preferred form of modification for the author,
and I see no reason not to accept this as source in the sense of the
DFSG, since there doesn't seem to be anything better.  Consequently, the
fonts would be free.


What do you think?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)



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