Re: [Pkg-fonts-devel] RFS: ttf-takao (NEW)

[Jun Kobayashi <jkbys@ubuntu.com>]

Paul Wise wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Jun Kobayashi <jkbys@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
>> If we are permitted to patch the IPA Fonts itself or the upstream is
>> open and release fixed version quickly considering our request, it's
>> better to work with the upstream and make IPA Fonts better.
> 
> Since the package is in Debian main, patches should be permitted.
> 
>> But we are prohibited to distribute modified IPA Fonts by its license
> 
> If that is true, then otf-ipafonts needs to be moved to non-free.

If there are any changes, the name must be changed. So no patches are 
permitted with the name "IPA Font".

This is stated in Article 3 of IPA Font License:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html

Josselin Mouette said this seems reasonable for fonts and Hideki Yamane put 
it into main:
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg40120.html


>> and IPA takes much time until the new version release. It took 10 months
>> in fact from past version to current version though past version widely
>> known including some problems. This is understandable considering they
>> are governmental organization and they are cautious for their activity.
>> But if we find bugs on IPA fonts, all we can do is reporting to IPA and
>> waiting fixed by them. This can cause to distribute buggy Japanese fonts
>> to Debian and other distributions users for months. This is why we create
>> community developed version, Takao Fonts and I think Takao should be
>> included into Debian.
> 
> Why not just add the patches to the otf-ipafonts Debian package until
> IPA accepts them?

This is because they prohibit to distribute modified IPA Fonts. If we add 
the patches to the ttf-ipafonts Debian package, the binary packages include 
modified IPA Fonts binary file. It seems to be against the IPA Font License 
to distribute such files.

Regards,
Jun Kobayashi