RE: wanted: font archive

[Alistair Vining]

[apologies for the continued cc'ing]

Werner Lemberg wrote:
>
> IIRC, I've already sent you the license -- it is a slightly reworded
> GPL which basically replaces 'program' with 'font'.  Whom shall I
> contact for proceeding?

You sent it to this list and rms and debian-legal on 7 December last year,
along with some stuff about Apple's patent letter.

I kept quiet then, but this license seems to me to have several problems
which stem from it being -- as you say -- the GPL with amendments.  I'll
list some:

Quote: "If the modified fonts normally reads commands interactively when
run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in
the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an
appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or
else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute
the Font under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of
this License."

This is just nonsense:  fonts don't read commands interactively when run.
Instead, if the fonts remain in TrueType format, there are appropriate
places in the 'name' table for copyrights and license URLs.  If they are
converted to other formats, there may be no appropriate place.

Quote: "You must insert a prominent notice in each modified file stating
how and when you changed that file."

Burdening the font itself with a changelog seems unnecessary, and it will
never be prominent.  I'm not even sure where it would go.

Quote: "Therefore, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Font
with the Font on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not
bring the other work under the scope of this License."

Well that's big ;)  This sentence should go.

Quote: "NO WARRANTY ... (lots of shouting) ... DAMAGES WAIVER ... (more
shouting)"

Has anyone ever sued for damages when a font didn't work?  Couldn't this be
toned down?  And "COPYRIGHTT" is a typo.

To these specific nit-picks a couple of general problems.

The GPL is intended to secure access to source code.  What this represents
in the case of a font is unclear -- it's like insisting shell scripts or
photographs are provided with source code, whereas they are their own
source code.

There are only a few exceptions to this, and I suppose TrueType
instructions ('hints') would be one of them, but there's no standard
high-level 'language' for these, so short of saying that people should
supply Fontographer or Fontlab files -- neither of which are free -- people
will find it harder to modify the hinting of the fonts.  [I'm not saying
your fonts have hints rather than bitmaps -- I've not looked.]

I guess we need a "free" font editor ;)

Secondly, modifying fonts causes problems if your changes affect the
metrics: documents may change in length, etc.  This is the same problem
that led to the creation of the LaTeX (...) Public License which says that
if you change things without the approval of the author you have to change
the name.  I think this is a requirement that would benefit everyone.  If
the developers want to keep changing the metrics then -- well, that's up to
them.

Finally, font copyright in the US at least is a mess anyway, so the *shape*
of your glyphs / the overall appearance of your font is not copyrighted,
only the particular expression of that shape in the font file.  Given that
copyright is the lever behind the GPL, this may be important.  I'll assume
it would be impossible for someone else to take out a US design patent on
the *shape* of your font, but nothing is impossible these days, and people
have patented fonts.

Well, there you go, last December I said nothing, now I've said too much ;)

Many thanks for your generous gift of this font -- I hate to think how long
it must take to do an entire Han font...

( al )