I got pulled into a discussion on a non-software mailing list regarding
fonts. It was claimed that redistributing the Lucida fonts was illegal.
This surprised me since these are included with XFree86, which I still
consider to be freely redistributable. The dispute involved trying to
acquire these fonts in order to reproduce the style of a certain
publisher.
Copying part of the legal notice that comes with the XFree86 source
regarding the Lucida fonts from Bigelow and Holmes:
NOTICE TO USER: The source code, including the glyphs or icons
forming a par of the OPEN LOOK TM Graphic User Interface, on this
tape and in these files is copyrighted under U.S. and international
laws. Sun Microsystems, Inc. of Mountain View, California owns
the copyright and has design patents pending on many of the icons.
AT&T is the owner of the OPEN LOOK trademark associated with the
materials on this tape. Users and possessors of this source code
are hereby granted a nonexclusive, royalty-free copyright and
design patent license to use this code in individual and
commercial software. A royalty-free, nonexclusive trademark
license to refer to the code and output as "OPEN LOOK" compatible
is available from AT&T if, and only if, the appearance of the
icons or glyphs is not changed in any manner except as absolutely
necessary to accommodate the standard resolution of the screen or
other output device, the code and output is not changed except as
authorized herein, and the code and output is validated by AT&T.
Bigelow & Holmes is the owner of the Lucida (R) trademark for the
fonts and bit-mapped images associated with the materials on this
tape. Users are granted a royalty-free, nonexclusive license to use
the trademark only to identify the fonts and bit-mapped images if,
and only if, the fonts and bit-mapped images are not modified in any
way by the user.
Questions: Is it permissable to redistribute the Lucida fonts? Is an
electronic document considered software? Is it permissable to
distribute printouts using these fonts?
Thanks,
--
David Johnson
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<http://www.usermode.org>
