contributing new font package for xorg (fwd)

Ely Levy elylevy-xserver at cs.huji.ac.il
Wed Aug 10 15:48:19 PDT 2005


It's not really a new fact or so, It says so in the fsf FAQ
they even wrote an experimental clause that you can add to the license
to fix that problem. (Somehow I don't feel safe using experimental
legal things on important work but that just me...).


Ely Levy

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Jesse Barnes wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 10, 2005 3:11 pm, Ely Levy wrote:
> > GPLing fonts means that every document that puts the fonts inside it
> > would be GPLed as well (certain pdfs some level of ps and other kind
> > of docs do that). that can cause major legal issues with articals or
> > books someone decide to sell in pdf format.
> > Ironicly enough it also mean that GFDL licensed doc using GPL fonts
> > would break both GPL and GFDL (fun no?:)
>
> This could easily turn into a licensing war, but do you have any
> precedent or strong legal basis for that statement?
>
> Just because a document uses a certain font doesn't mean it's a
> "derivative work" of that font, since the font is easily changeable
> without affecting the content of the document (in my very unlawyerly
> opinion).  I definitely don't consider this email to be a derivative
> work of the Monospace font that came with my Fedora installation, even
> if I attach it to the mail so you can see it as I composed it.
>
> For fonts it seems like the only real derivative work would be a new
> font that uses bits from an old font...
>
> Jesse
>



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