Re: [tex-live] Re: License of fonts included in X.org sources

[George N. White III]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
Current acrobat reader (well, it was at least a couple of years ago) 
licencing forbids it to be distributed alongside other pdf generating 
tools like pdftex, which is in big part why it was removed from non-free 
back then.


The majority of commercial 3rd party pdf generating tools target Adobe's 
key markets.  Allowing them to include Acrobat Reader could be interpreted 
as some sort of Adobe endorsement as well as giving them an excuse for 
sprinkling Adobe logos around in their literature.  There is a huge 
difference between a product that enables pdf for a class of users that 
would be difficult for Adobe to properly support themselves and products 
that aim to carve out small chunks of Adobe's key markets.


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George N. White III  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Re: License of fonts included in X.org sources

[George N. White III]

On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:


Daniel == Daniel Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


  Right.  As I said earlier, it's probably tied up somewhere deep
  within TOG: no-one still involved with X today remembers this at
  all.

Maybe it is sufficient to find someone at X.org who is willing to care
about the legal stuff.  It is a great advantage that Thanh found
someone at Adobe who remembers.

  So, unless you really, really, really, really, really,
  really need these fonts, it's not going to be worth the effort.

There are some reasons why it's worth some effort:
[...]


This is another good example of the need for sunset provisions to ensure 
that intellectual property doesn't become unavailable due to demise and/or 
lack of interest of the owner.


Lacking such provisions, the effort might be used better to extend the
virtual font mechanism to allow someone to create a new Type 1 font 
defining additional or replacement glyphs that will be used in combination

with some existing font.  This would be sufficiently useful outside the
TeX community that I think it stands a good chance of getting broad 
support.  One way to implement this would be to generate a temporary local

type 1 font, so the magic would all be hidden in mktfm without the need to
change pdfviewers, ghostscript, etc.

--
George N. White III  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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