PMF license / was: Re: [Xprint] Re: X Strike Force XOrg SVN commit: r19 -inxorg/trunk/debian: . scripts
Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 07:44:30AM +0200, Roland Mainz wrote:
> > > |>|>+ server are not licensed at all, and some of the fonts bear no
> > > |>|>+ copyright information whatsoever.
> > > |>|>+
> > > |>|>+ All Rights Reserved.
> > > |>|>+
> > > |>|>+ These font files therefore do not satisfy DFSG 1 ("Free
> > > |>|>+ Redistribution"), DFSG 2 ("Source Code"), or DFSG 3 ("Derived
> > > |>Works").
> > > |>|>+
> > > |>|>+
> > > |>xc/programs/Xserver/XpConfig/C/print/models/HPDJ1600C/fonts/9nb00051.pmf
> > > |>|
> > > |>|
> > > |>| These files are no fonts, they are font metrics information (and the
> > > |>| copyright notice was just copied over from the original font from the
> > > |>| converter and does NOT apply to the font metrics files. The converter
> > > |>| just preserved all context attributes of the font regardless of their
> > > |>| content). The PMF fonts shipped with Xprint _conform_ 100% to the DFSG
> > > |>| 1/2/3 specs. This has extensively been discussed in the past.
> > > |>
> > > |>Do you have any reference I can lookup please?
> > > |
> > > | It should be archived either in the Debian-X mailinglist or in one of
> > > | the xprt-xprintorg package bugs. Drew Parsons may remember the bugid...
> > > | my email archive doesn't go that far into the past (I guess that issue
> > > | was debated around 2002 or earlier).
> > > |
> > > | The point is that we are talking about the files which contain only
> > > | width/height data (=metrics information) for each glphy and _no_ bitmap
> > > | or outline data (the PMF files are pretty small - if they would contain
> > > | bitmaps rasterizes at 2560DPI you would see GIANT files). The font data
> > > | itself, e.g. outlines or bitmaps are copyrightable but the width and
> > > | height information does not fall into the category - it would be silly
> > > | as everyone who would want to write an application which generates
> > > | Postscript code would need an explicit license from Adobe. _If_ Adobe
> > > | would have copyrighted the metrics information no opensource application
> > > | (Mozilla, Ghostscript, Openoffice, JAVA, etc.) would be able to use one
> > > | of the 30 default Postscript fonts defined by Postscript Level 2 as
> > > | there would be no way to measure&layout the glyphs (the same applies to
> > > | applications which generate PDF files). For example Mozilla ships the
> > > | same information stored in the PMF files as part of it's Postscript
> > > | print module (see
> > > | http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/gfx/src/ps/Courier-Bold.h , note
> > > | that this source code is under MPL(=Mozilla Public License), the PMF
> > > | files in the XOrg tree were donated by HP and Sun under the MIT license)
> > > | and noone complained about that since many years (the same data were
> > > | used in Netscape 4.x, too).
> > >
> > > Ok. I think you conviced me. I want to wait for Branden's opinion too
> > > since he was the one creating these copyright notes and scripts for
> > > removal of these files in the first place.
> >
> > OK.
>
> I'd appreciate some precise references, please. I don't remember this
> issue being discussed on debian-x.
>
> Your reasoning seems to be grounded on a couple of problematic premises:
> * That font metric information isn't copyrightable. This may be true in
> the United States, but one of the big reasons Debian still has a non-free
> section is because Adobe in Japan asserts copyright over just this sort
> of thing.
Again, this does not cover the PMF files. The original files have been
commited by Hewlett-Packard under the MIT/X Consortium license many many
years ago (and the files for the Postscript DDX were later refreshed by
me to fix a minor bug - and I committed them under the same license:
MIT/X.org). The so-called "copyright" notice in these files is just an
attribute which informs the application that the attribute "COPYRIGHT"
has a value. But this value does not relicense the file itself away from
the MIT/X.org license. That would be the same as "relicesing" this email
just because it references the string. References or index data of this
kind cannot be copyrighted, neither in the US nor in Japan nor elsewhere
in the world.
> I will try to find this discussion in Debian's list archives
> if you're interested.
Sure. It may be possible that Adobe Japan did some tricky stuff with CID
fonts, but again this doesn't apply to something which has been
explicitly commited under the MIT/X.org license by the authors.
----
Bye,
Roland
--
__ . . __
(o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz@nrubsig.org
\__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer
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