6:25 a.m.
Hi,
I'm afraid these answers are utterly unconvincing. I've just checked
Debian made the very same analysis as us, and you're on your way to get
yourself blacklisted in all major Linux distributions.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-extra/+bug/135911/comme...
In case that's not clear enough, you have a problem.
On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 12:48 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> Dear Hans,
>
> Some legal concerns have arisen regarding the licensing of the TeX
> Gyre fonts - please see
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456580. In particular,
> this part is most relevant:
>
> 2. The textlive-texfm includes tex-gyre fonts. As the authors freely
> admit they lifted the GNU Ghostscript GPL fonts, changed their format,
> modified the result,
> and relicensed it all under their own license [1]. They don't list any
> authorization for this from the previous rights holders in their
> package. Since we can not ship the GPL bits they lifted under another
> license, and we can not ship the bits they added under the GPL without
> tex-gyre people authorization, the whole thing is un-distributable and
> must be removed [2]
>
> [1] page 8 of http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/afp05.pdf
> [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2008-July/msg00111.html
>
> I wonder if you would take a few moments to look at this and comment
> on the correctness of the analysis and help to resolve these issues? I
> am sure you'd agree with me that resolving this is important for the
> TeX Gyre project, and free software fonts in general.
>
> Finally, in case it's not clear, I'd just like to point out that I am
> *not* contacting you in my capacity as chair of the UKTUG funding
> sub-committee in this instance, but as a member of UKTUG, and also a
> Fedora contributor. Nonetheless, as a UKTUG member I would not be
> happy to think that UKTUG is financially supporting a project which is
> in violation of the GPL, if that is indeed the case.
a short reply (i have to catch up many mails after the tug conference)
- the gust font licence is mostly the lppl licence which is accepted as ok
Irrelevant. We are not complaining about the Gust font license we are
complaining about re-licensing without previuous authors authorization.
- the main 'additions' concern packaging (file names,
internal font
names, etc. since any simple replacement/extension can mess up doc
production and could put a stress on user group support), which is an
important issue for tex distributions
That's still a lot of work. We respect licensing regardless of the size
of the contribution
- gpl is targeted at programs and fonts are not exactly programs
Given the number of fonts we ship under GPL, LGPL or derived licenses
(including Liberation), this argument is not receivable. "I don't like
this license I'll just use another and no one's the wiser" — you're not
serious.
- we try to contact e.g. urw on some other issues (it's currently
not
even clear of some of the fonts were ever legally gpl'd!) but they don't
react (such a kind of 'disappearing responsibility' happened before with
some other font where eventually responsibility was transfered to tug)
You can not work just with URW. The right contacts are Artifex and all
the people who contributed to the fonts since their release.
- some of the 'original' fonts contain additions of rather
poor quality
(greek and cyrillic) and when/how they ended up in there withoput any
quality assurance is unclear, so in general one can say that these fonts
have a somewhat fuzzy history
Quality as nothing to do with licensing. You can make bad contributions
under a good license, and good contributions under a bad license. We can
ship the first but not the other.
we're currently convinced that eveything is ok with respect to
the
licence (btw, the amount of changes to the fonts are pretty large so one
might as well wonder if we're dealing with new digitizations)
Again, this is the kind of fuzzy logic that can not stand legaly.
Jerzy might have a more detailed answer since he's in charge of
the
licencing
--
Nicolas Mailhot
4:59 a.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
It looks to me like the GUST fokes did their best, but they're not a
big company, so they ignored some legal aspects. Rather than telling
them they're about to get blacklisted, perhaps a more constructive
approach is in order. Below are the copyright messages included with
(i) Nimubus No.9 Regular 1.06 in Type 1 format, as shipped by Fedora
9, and (ii) TeX Gyre Termes Regular 1.011, which is derived from
Nimbus, also currently shipped by Fedora:
<Nimbus copyright>
Copyright \050URW\051++,Copyright 1999 by \050URW\051++ Design &
Development; Cyrillic glyphs added by Valek Filippov \050C\051
2001-2005
</Nimbus copyright>
<Termes copyright>
Copyright (URW)++, copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development;
Cyrillic glyphs added by Valek Filippov, copyright 2001-2002;
Vietnamese characters were added by Han The Thanh; copyright 2006,
2008 for TeX Gyre extensions by B. Jackowski and J.M. Nowacki (on
behalf of TeX users groups). This work is released under the GUST Font
License -- see http://tug.org/fonts/licenses/GUST-FONT-LICENSE.txt for
details.
</Termes copyright>
As you can see, there is no attempt to missattribute the work. The
only trouble is that GUST attempted to relicense the work under more
liberal terms, from GPL to LPPL/GUST. IMHO, the way is to convince URW
and the two individual contributors (Valek Filippov and Han The Thanh)
to agree to relicense their work under a license more appropriate for
fonts. Perhaps Tom can suggest what the best license is.
It seem that GUST had trouble hearing back from URW. Perhaps some
company with more legal clout should offer some help. After all, URW
cannot financially benefit from GPL'd fonts that have been hacked by
the FOSS community for a decade, so my guess is that URW saw this
relicensing matter as just not worth their time. Also, when URW
released the fonts, people weren't aware as they are today of the
legal implications of GPL for fonts...
Hope this helps,
Vasile
2008/7/26 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net>:
Hi,
I'm afraid these answers are utterly unconvincing. I've just checked
Debian made the very same analysis as us, and you're on your way to get
yourself blacklisted in all major Linux distributions.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-extra/+bug/135911/comme...
In case that's not clear enough, you have a problem.
On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 12:48 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
> Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> > Dear Hans,
> >
> > Some legal concerns have arisen regarding the licensing of the TeX
> > Gyre fonts - please see
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456580. In particular,
> > this part is most relevant:
> >
> > 2. The textlive-texfm includes tex-gyre fonts. As the authors freely
> > admit they lifted the GNU Ghostscript GPL fonts, changed their format,
> > modified the result,
> > and relicensed it all under their own license [1]. They don't list any
> > authorization for this from the previous rights holders in their
> > package. Since we can not ship the GPL bits they lifted under another
> > license, and we can not ship the bits they added under the GPL without
> > tex-gyre people authorization, the whole thing is un-distributable and
> > must be removed [2]
> >
> > [1] page 8 of http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/afp05.pdf
> > [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2008-July/msg00111.html
> >
> > I wonder if you would take a few moments to look at this and comment
> > on the correctness of the analysis and help to resolve these issues? I
> > am sure you'd agree with me that resolving this is important for the
> > TeX Gyre project, and free software fonts in general.
> >
> > Finally, in case it's not clear, I'd just like to point out that I am
> > *not* contacting you in my capacity as chair of the UKTUG funding
> > sub-committee in this instance, but as a member of UKTUG, and also a
> > Fedora contributor. Nonetheless, as a UKTUG member I would not be
> > happy to think that UKTUG is financially supporting a project which is
> > in violation of the GPL, if that is indeed the case.
>
> a short reply (i have to catch up many mails after the tug conference)
>
> - the gust font licence is mostly the lppl licence which is accepted as ok
Irrelevant. We are not complaining about the Gust font license we are
complaining about re-licensing without previuous authors authorization.
> - the main 'additions' concern packaging (file names, internal font
> names, etc. since any simple replacement/extension can mess up doc
> production and could put a stress on user group support), which is an
> important issue for tex distributions
That's still a lot of work. We respect licensing regardless of the size
of the contribution
> - gpl is targeted at programs and fonts are not exactly programs
Given the number of fonts we ship under GPL, LGPL or derived licenses
(including Liberation), this argument is not receivable. "I don't like
this license I'll just use another and no one's the wiser" — you're not
serious.
> - we try to contact e.g. urw on some other issues (it's currently not
> even clear of some of the fonts were ever legally gpl'd!) but they don't
> react (such a kind of 'disappearing responsibility' happened before with
> some other font where eventually responsibility was transfered to tug)
You can not work just with URW. The right contacts are Artifex and all
the people who contributed to the fonts since their release.
> - some of the 'original' fonts contain additions of rather poor quality
> (greek and cyrillic) and when/how they ended up in there withoput any
> quality assurance is unclear, so in general one can say that these fonts
> have a somewhat fuzzy history
Quality as nothing to do with licensing. You can make bad contributions
under a good license, and good contributions under a bad license. We can
ship the first but not the other.
> we're currently convinced that eveything is ok with respect to the
> licence (btw, the amount of changes to the fonts are pretty large so one
> might as well wonder if we're dealing with new digitizations)
Again, this is the kind of fuzzy logic that can not stand legaly.
> Jerzy might have a more detailed answer since he's in charge of the
> licencing
--
Nicolas Mailhot
_______________________________________________
Fedora-fonts-list mailing list
Fedora-fonts-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-list
11:17 a.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 12:59 +0300, Vasile Gaburici wrote:
As you can see, there is no attempt to missattribute the work. The
only trouble is that GUST attempted to relicense the work under more
liberal terms, from GPL to LPPL/GUST. IMHO, the way is to convince URW
and the two individual contributors (Valek Filippov and Han The Thanh)
to agree to relicense their work under a license more appropriate for
fonts. Perhaps Tom can suggest what the best license is.
I won't go so far as to suggest the "best license", however, the
simplest solution would be to convince the contributors to agree to
license their contributions under the GPL (with font exception) as that
would be compatible with URW's original work (thus, we would not be
bottlenecked trying to reach URW).
~spot
1:13 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
2008/7/30 Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com>:
I won't go so far as to suggest the "best license", however, the
simplest solution would be to convince the contributors to agree to
license their contributions under the GPL (with font exception) as that
would be compatible with URW's original work (thus, we would not be
bottlenecked trying to reach URW).
URW's GPL release does not include the "font exception" additional
permission; indeed, it predates it.
--
Regards,
Dave
1:19 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 19:13 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
URW's GPL release does not include the "font exception"
additional
permission; indeed, it predates it.
Yes, however, GPL is not incompatible with "GPL with font exception".
It doesn't make sense to continue using GPL without the font exception
for
font licensing, which is why I recommended that instead of simply GPL.
~spot
2:29 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
My lack of legal brain is confused on this. If URW doesn't change the
license and it remains purely GPL, but the other contributors agree to
re-license their parts as GLP+FontException, then what is there to be
gained by this? Isn't the user bound by most restrictive license in
the package, that is pure GPL?
On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 19:13 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
> URW's GPL release does not include the "font exception" additional
> permission; indeed, it predates it.
Yes, however, GPL is not incompatible with "GPL with font exception".
It doesn't make sense to continue using GPL without the font exception
for
font licensing, which is why I recommended that instead of simply GPL.
~spot
4:22 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
2008/7/30 Vasile Gaburici <vgaburici(a)gmail.com>:
My lack of legal brain is confused on this. If URW doesn't change
the
license and it remains purely GPL, but the other contributors agree to
re-license their parts as GLP+FontException, then what is there to be
gained by this? Isn't the user bound by most restrictive license in
the package, that is pure GPL?
That is my understanding, and my point :-)
5:02 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 22:22 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
2008/7/30 Vasile Gaburici <vgaburici(a)gmail.com>:
> My lack of legal brain is confused on this. If URW doesn't change the
> license and it remains purely GPL, but the other contributors agree to
> re-license their parts as GLP+FontException, then what is there to be
> gained by this? Isn't the user bound by most restrictive license in
> the package, that is pure GPL?
That is my understanding, and my point :-)
Yes, that is true, but:
A) The package is then distributable
B) The only remaining issue is to sell URW on the font exception, which
can be done at any time.
~spot
5:07 p.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
2008/7/30 Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com>:
> 2008/7/30 Vasile Gaburici <vgaburici(a)gmail.com>:
> > Isn't the user bound by most restrictive license in
> > the package, that is pure GPL?
Yes, that is true, but:
A) The package is then distributable
B) The only remaining issue is to sell URW on the font exception, which
can be done at any time.
Ah yes okay, now I get it, when you said
"thus, we would not be bottlenecked trying to reach URW"
you didn't mean we don't have to contact URW to arrive at our
destination - we still do - just we aren't bottlenecked from
distributing the Gyre fonts.
Perhaps the Gyre project could release all the glyphs that are not
derived from the original GPL ones as a separate font package with the
GUST license?
2:59 a.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
Most of Gyre's additions are not glyhs but OpenType tables: kerning,
locale specific typographic rules (locl etc.)
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:07 AM, Dave Crossland <dave(a)lab6.com> wrote:
2008/7/30 Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com>:
>> 2008/7/30 Vasile Gaburici <vgaburici(a)gmail.com>:
>> > Isn't the user bound by most restrictive license in
>> > the package, that is pure GPL?
>
> Yes, that is true, but:
>
> A) The package is then distributable
> B) The only remaining issue is to sell URW on the font exception, which
> can be done at any time.
Ah yes okay, now I get it, when you said
"thus, we would not be bottlenecked trying to reach URW"
you didn't mean we don't have to contact URW to arrive at our
destination - we still do - just we aren't bottlenecked from
distributing the Gyre fonts.
Perhaps the Gyre project could release all the glyphs that are not
derived from the original GPL ones as a separate font package with the
GUST license?
2:29 a.m.
New subject: TeXGyre fonts licensing concern
On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 12:59 +0300, Vasile Gaburici wrote:
It looks to me like the GUST fokes did their best, but they're
not a
big company, so they ignored some legal aspects. Rather than telling
them they're about to get blacklisted, perhaps a more constructive
approach is in order.
When in doubt, ask questions first and relicense later. The correct
solution always was just to keep the original license and only change it
if every entity that contributed to the work approved.
So what if the GUST people do not like the original licence — many fonts
have a sucky license (Bistream Vera, Liberation…), and people still
abide with the original licensing.
(And for the record, I doubt anyone but the GUST people find their
license pretty. Legalese referensing other legalese, come on, it's not a
perl obfuscation contest)
Nicolas Mailhot
5740
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10 comments
4 participants
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