Re: music notation fonts

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I'm very glad to see such a large open-source effort for music
> notation.  I've actually started working on a similar project
> myself, although my intent is to make a GUI-based notation
> application (along the lines of Finale or Encore) rather than a
> batch system.

Good luck :-)

> As I'm starting to learn about notation software, I've observed that
> most (if not all) applications rely on music notation fonts to plot
> the notes on the staff, and in many cases, the staffs themselves are
> part of the font.  So my question is this: are there any truly
> open-source music notation fonts that I could use in my application?

LilyPond's fonts are GPLed (with an embedding exception), which we
consider the right kind of `free'.

> Assuming that I one day finish my project, I'd like to distribute it
> freely and contribute it to the open-source community, but I don't
> know much about how licensing works when you add third-party
> components, even if such components are themselves open-source.  I'd
> appreciate if someone could shed some light here -- thanks!

I think this is not the right forum for discussing license issues, and
you can find plenty of links in the internet.  However, in general, if
you use GPLed stuff, the results must be GPLed also.  There are more
liberal licenses like BSD.


    Werner