On 28 September 2010 23:19, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoud...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Ubuntu Font Family is now public. > > http://font.ubuntu.com/ > > And they just couldn't resist reinventing the wheel, of course. > > http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ubuntu-font-licence-1.0.txt > > Alexandre Prokoudine > http://libregraphicsworld.org
I don't think they reinvented the wheel; the wheels available are not round. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/README says, - - - - 8< - - - - This is the master distribution of the Ubuntu Font Licence https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-licence This licence is derived from the SIL Open Font Licence (OFL) 1.1. The Ubuntu font licence is an interim licence which is intended to merge with a future version of the OFL after a legal and community review process. - - - - 8< - - - - http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/FAQ.html says, - - - - 8< - - - - The license chosen by any free software project is one of the foundational decisions that sets out how derivatives and contributions can occur, and in turn what kind of community will form around the project. Using a licence that is compatible with other popular licences is a powerful constraint because of the network effects: the freedom to share improvements between projects allows free software to reach high-quality over time. License-proliferation leads to many incompatible licenses, underminding the network effect, the freedom to share and ultimately making the libre movement that Ubuntu is a part of less effective. For all kinds of software, writing a new license is not to be taken lightly and is a choice that needs to be thoughly justified if this path is taken. Today it is not clear to Canonical what the best license is for a font project like the Ubuntu Font Family: one that starts life designed by professionals and continues with the full range of community development, from highly commercial work in new directions to curious beginners' experimental contributions. The fast and steady pace of the Ubuntu release cycle means that an interim libre license has been necessary to enable the consideration of the font family as part of Ubuntu 10.10 operating system release. Before taking any decision on licensing, Canonical as sponsor and backer of the project has reviewed the many existing licenses used for libre fonts and engaged the stewards of the most popular licenses in detailed discussions. The current interim licence is the first step in progressing the state-of-the-art in licensing for libre font development. The public discussion now must involve everyone in the (comparatively new) area of the libre font community; including font users, software freedom advocates, open source supporters and existing libre font developers. Most importantly, the minds and wishes of professional type designers considering entering the free software business community must be taken on board. Conversations and discussion has taken place, privately, with individuals from the following groups (generally speaking personally on behalf of themselves, rather than their affiliations): SIL International Open Font Library Software Freedom Law Center Google Font API (nb. crashes Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04... don't click!) Document embedding One issue highlighted early on in the survey of existing font licenses is that of document embedding. Almost all font licenses, both free and unfree, permit embedding a font into a document without the license terms of the font applying to the document. Embedding a font with other works that make up a document creates a "combined work" and copyleft would normally require the whole document to be distributed under the terms of the font licence. As beautiful as the font might be, such a licence makes a font too restrictive for useful general purpose digital publishing. The situation is not entirely unique to fonts and is encountered also with tools such as GNU Bison: a vanilla GNU GPL license would require anything generated with Bison to be made available under the terms of the GPL as well. To avoid this, Bison is published with an additional permission to the GPL which allows the output of Bison to be made available under any licence. The conflict between licensing of fonts and licensing of documents, is addressed in two popular libre font licenses, the SIL OFL and GNU GPL: SIL Open Font Licence: When OFL fonts are embedded in a document, the OFL's terms do not apply to that document. GPL Font Exception: The situation is resolved by granting an additional permission to allow documents to not be covered by the GPL. The Ubuntu Font Family must also resolve this conflict, ensuring that if the font is embedded and then extracted it is once again clearly under the terms of its libre licence. Long-term licensing Those individuals involved, especially from Ubuntu and Canonical, are interested in finding a long-term libre licence that finds broad favour across the whole libre font community. At the moment there are a choice of licenses, but no single license is a clear favourite. The deliberation during the past months has been on how to licence the Ubuntu Font Family in the short-term, while knowingly encouraging everyone to pursue a long-term goal. Copyright assignment will be required so that the Ubuntu Font Family's licensing can be progressively expanded to one (or more) licences, as best practice continues to evolve within the libre font community. Canonical will support and fund legal work on libre font licensing. It is recognised that the cost and time commitments required are likely to be significant. We invite other capable parties to join in supporting this activity. The GPL version 3 (GPLv3) will be used for Ubuntu Font Family build scripts and the CC-BY-SA for associated documentation and non-font content: all items which do not end up embedded in general works and documents. Ubuntu Font Licence For the short-term only, the initial licence is the Ubuntu Font License (UFL). This is based on the SIL OFL 1.1, and seeks to clarify the issues that arose during discussions and legal review. It is only intended as an interim license, and the overriding aim is to support the creation of a more suitable and generic libre font licence. As soon as such a licence is developed, the Ubuntu Font License will migrate to it - made possible by copyright assignment in the interium. Between the OFL 1.1, and the UFL 1.0, the following changes are made to produce the Ubuntu Font Licence: Clarification: Document embedding (see section above). Apply at point of distribution, instead of receipt Author vs. copyright holder disambiguation (type designers are authors, with the copyright holder normally being the funder) Define "propagate" (for internationalisation, similar to the GPLv3) Define "substantially changed" Trademarks are explicitly not transferred Refine renaming requirement (to allow for webfont format conversion and other minor modifications to retain the original name while making it clear the original has been modified, but still requiring substantial modifications to rename) Streamlining: Remove "not to be sold separately" clause (to allow for commercial improvement) Remove "Reserved name" declaration - - - - 8< - - - - So, I hope that clarifies things. Any questions? :-) I am sad that the dialogue that went into the UFL has happened behind closed doors, but that seems to be what was preferred by everyone else involved. I very much hope that the next phase of dialogue will happen in the open, but that isn't up to me. -- Cheers Dave
