2:56 p.m.
I found HVD Comic Serif Pro on the wish list of fonts to be reviewed and
packaged for inclusion into Fedora GNU/Linux.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HVD_Comic_Serif_fonts
I downloaded a copy of the font archive file --
http://hvdfonts.com/assets/Document/15/HVD_Comic_Serif_Pro.zip -- and I
read the Readme.txt file therein.
That Readme.txt file includes terms which conflict with the license:
This typeface may not be modified in any way unless it contains an
unmodified copy of this text file and attributes Hannes von Döhren in
the font metadata.
and
Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components,
in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself. Original or
Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed
and/or sold with any software, provided that each copycontains the
above copyright notice and this license
conflict with portions of the license (for the font, I can only guess)
which is listed as:
LICENSE:
"This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative
Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105,
USA."
The top two passages I quoted above seem to me to be licensing terms.
And these terms conflict with CC BY 3.0 unported:
- there is no requirement in this CC license which requires a licensor
to include "an unmodified copy of this text file"
- there are no restrictions in this CC license against distributing
copies of this font alone for a fee
- attribution in accordance with this CC license can be achieved without
including this Readme.txt file (one could, for example, include no such
file and list changes elsewhere, or include a different readme.txt file
which gives Hannes von Döhren credit and list changes in that different
file)
- this CC license says it is the only set of terms for licensing this
work under this CC license (sections 4a and 8e). My reading of these
sections say that any other terms (such as those listed in the
Readme.txt file) do not have to be followed.
Looking at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HVD_Comic_Serif_fonts it seems
that Fedora considers CC BY 3.0 unported to be the only operative
license on this font. But how has Fedora determined that this
Readme.txt file can be ignored? I looked through the mailing list
archives for this list and found no discussion referring to this font.
Has anyone contacted Hannes von Döhren about this?
Thanks.
10:37 a.m.
Le Ven 26 novembre 2010 21:56, J.B. Nicholson-Owens a écrit :
Looking at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HVD_Comic_Serif_fonts it
seems
that Fedora considers CC BY 3.0 unported to be the only operative
license on this font. But how has Fedora determined that this
Readme.txt file can be ignored? I looked through the mailing list
archives for this list and found no discussion referring to this font.
Font authors are often very confused about licensing. A large part of font
packaging is straightening the licensing bits with upstream :( So this is not
an isolated case. Many fonts are put on the wishlist because there seems to be
some intent by upstream to put them under a liberal license. This needs to be
confirmed by the packager. Usually, upstream is actually ok with the floss
license, just forgot to clean up previous licensing terms from readmes or from
the fonts themselves.
So don't panic. There's no reason to think the restrictive bits were added
after the CC-ing. You just need to check with upstream.
If you don't want to deal with this part, try to package fonts from upstreams
which are known to be licensing-clean (SIL fonts, Google font directory fonts,
ADF fonts¹)
It will likely become better now that more and more people use the OFL. People
will just copy it (like software people do with the GPL) instead of crafting
terms by hand.
¹ the ones on this page http://arkandis.tuxfamily.org/adffonts.html not the
3rd-party reworks
--
Nicolas Mailhot
11:01 a.m.
On 02/11/2011 11:37 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
Le Ven 26 novembre 2010 21:56, J.B. Nicholson-Owens a écrit :
> Looking at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HVD_Comic_Serif_fonts it seems
> that Fedora considers CC BY 3.0 unported to be the only operative
> license on this font. But how has Fedora determined that this
> Readme.txt file can be ignored? I looked through the mailing list
> archives for this list and found no discussion referring to this font.
Font authors are often very confused about licensing. A large part of font
packaging is straightening the licensing bits with upstream :( So this is not
an isolated case. Many fonts are put on the wishlist because there seems to be
some intent by upstream to put them under a liberal license. This needs to be
confirmed by the packager. Usually, upstream is actually ok with the floss
license, just forgot to clean up previous licensing terms from readmes or from
the fonts themselves.
So don't panic. There's no reason to think the restrictive bits were added
after the CC-ing. You just need to check with upstream.
I already checked with upstream back in December, and they replied:
Hi Tom,
I am sorry for the confusion.
I changend the License from to textfile to the CCA 3.0
but it seems i forgot to delete the conflicting parts.
Thank you for your email. I will lchange this.
And: You can use the HVD Comic Serif and include it in Fedora, if you want.
Best regards,
Hannes
··············································
HVD Fonts
··············································
Hannes von Döhren
Schillerstraße 34
10627 Berlin/Germany
T: +49 (0)173 357 93 76
hannes(a)hvdfonts.com
www.hvdfonts.com
··············································
I thought I had passed this along, but maybe I forgot.
~tom
==
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participants (3)
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J.B. Nicholson-Owens -
Nicolas Mailhot -
Tom Callaway