Re: Is "IPA Font license" DFSG-Free?
Hello, Dmitrijs!
You wrote to debian-legal@lists.debian.org on Sun, 31 May 2009 18:58:04 +0100:
> 2009/5/31 Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org>:
>> Le dimanche 31 mai 2009 ? 20:52 +0900, Hideki Yamane a ?crit :
>>> ÿI've ITPed IPAfont as otf-ipafont package.
>>
>>> ÿYou can see its license at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html
>>> ÿPlease give me your feedback (Please add CC to me). Thanks.
>>
>> The only things that looks suspicious are the name change clauses.
>>
>> For derived works:
>> ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿNo one may use or include the name of the Licensed Program as a
>> ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿprogram name, font name or file name of the Derived Program.
>>
>> And for redistribution without modification:
>> ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe Recipient may not change the name of the Licensed Program.
>>
>
> This is a long standing tradition within TeX to prevent namespace
> collision. Back in the old days it was important that if you modify
> and release something and you are not the original author you have to
> change the name of the package such that you don't break the
> compatability with all the TeX documents in the wild.
That's a noble goal but it doesn't make it DFSG-free. AFAIR the idea
is that filenames are functional so a DFSG-free license cannot
prohibit their change.
> This clause comes from (off top of my head) the LaTeX license
LPPL just codified what was there long before.
> which FSF declared
> as GPL incompatible due to this renaming forcing clause.
>
> TeXLive is in Debian and a lot of it is license under Latex license so
> that bit is DFSG-free but the example above is self-contradicting. I
> think the author intended to use the Latex license instead.
>
> See
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
>
> The Latex Project Public License 1.2
I hope most (la)tex packages have migrated to LPPL-1.3 long ago
(though didn't check it). And LPPL-1.3 have dropped filename change
clause after leeeengthy discussion on debian-legal.
Having said that, there were some very important files with filename
change clause in their licenses -- see
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/01/msg00160.html for
examples. I will be glad to hear that something has changed in the
last five years but I somehow doubt it.
Alexander Cherepanov
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