Unintended Consequences of Using GPL Fonts

innocent_white_lamb writes "An interesting discussion has surfaced on the Scribus mailing list. Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL. There are a lot of consequences here, such as internal corporate communications. It appears to make the use of GPL fonts undesirable in almost any document." Yes, it sounds crazy, but the experimental font-exception addition to the GPL (linked from the discussion) lends the idea some credence.

Comments

Presensation

[fembots]

I thought that using GPL fonts only make your document's presentation subject to the GPL, since fonts only change presensation of the information but not the information itself.

So isn't it the case either you can use the fonts, or not.

Re:Presensation

[m50d]

Yeah, but if the presented form is GPL you have to include source, which would presumably mean the original.

Re:Presensation

[Rui Lopes]

i didn't know that documents had presensation as you stated, as in before the stimulation of a sense organ...

Re:Presensation

[leonmergen]

Indeed, it isn't like you're changing the fonts, it's like you're using the fonts...

I mean, would I have to put up all my source code I've written with a GPL'ed editor? I don't think so, but it seems like a pretty similar case..

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Worth mentioning is something Adobe came up against when attempting to copyright fonts in the completeness.

You can't copyright the font face, what a font looks like. I don't know whether this is a specific exception in copyright law for fonts and other entities like them however.

What you can copyright are all the other particular parts to the font such as kerning & positioning info, the particular set of characters in the font, or the font file itself (whatever format it may be).

No matter whether you use a GPL font, or one of Adobe's most expensive & protected DRM'd font, the font copyright owner has absolutely no hold over works created with that font whatsoever.

Re:Presensation

[rebeka thomas]

Exactly. Look at the font faq regarding font face copyrightability.

You cannot copyright the typeface itself, so documents printed from a font have no link legally with the font used to create it. That's embedded as a specific exception in copyright law.

You can't embed the font file itself or substantial pieces of the data that created it in a document (such as a PDF) without permission from the owner, and it is there that GPL exceptions may be needed to prevent the entire document from becoming GPL.

If anybody tells you that a typeface on a document you have created is GPLd, then that has absolutely no legal weight. Can't copyright font typefaces, fullstop.

Re:Presensation

[Breakfast Pants]

"Indeed, it isn't like you're changing the fonts, it's like you're using the fonts..." If I take a lot of your GPLed code and put it into a library, can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed? Why not I'm not changing it, I'm using it. Doesn't matter if I'm just using it, the GPL prohibits this. The LGPL doesn't prohibit it but the GPL does. Now does this really apply to documents? I don't know but it isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be.

Re:Presensation

[anthony_dipierro]

You can't embed the font file itself or substantial pieces of the data that created it in a document (such as a PDF) without permission from the owner, and it is there that GPL exceptions may be needed to prevent the entire document from becoming GPL.

If you're just embedding the font without any changes in a document, it seems clear to me that this is an aggregation, and not the creation of a separate work. From the GPL, "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

Re:Presensation

[anthony_dipierro]

"Indeed, it isn't like you're changing the fonts, it's like you're using the fonts..." If I take a lot of your GPLed code and put it into a library, can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?

Well, yes, you can, and it wouldn't be direct copyright infringement. But in order to link the library with the code you'd need permission, so the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code, and it could be argued that you are then committing contributory copyright infringement. Whether or not you'd win this argument is somewhat unclear. I don't think the GPL has ever been tested in this way.

But this analogy doesn't hold for fonts anyway, at least not in the United States, fonts aren't copyrightable in the United States (what is copyrightable is the program which makes the font).

Re:Presensation

[Roger_Wilco]

This is interesting.

So Knuth's METAFONT does something useful; when you compile a TeX document, the font stored in the resulting file is bitmapped, so not subject to copyright.

Newer LaTeX setups with vector fonts could be subject to this, if the fonts are GPL'd.

Re:Presensation

[Tet]

If anybody tells you that a typeface on a document you have created is GPLd, then that has absolutely no legal weight. Can't copyright font typefaces, fullstop.

Complete and utter rubbish. The font FAQ to which you linked even agrees:

scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office, computer programs, and as such are copyrightable

You can't copyright the shape of the typeface, but you can copyright the electronic typeface file, since it (at least in the case of PostScript fonts, and probably for TrueType too) is a program. Adobe deliberately designed their font format to be a PostScript program specifically so that you could copyright them.

The only relevant question is whether a document that uses a font program is derived from it or merely aggregated with it. Common sense interpretation would seem to imply the latter. But common sense and the law disagree on far too many occasions to assume that'll hold true in front of a judge...

Re:Presensation

[mbaciarello]

Interestingly, I've been longing to be able to use the Gotham font for a while now (I like my presentations stylish and trendy, heh.)

Anyways, take a look at Hoefler & Frère-Jones EULA for their fonts. It clearly mentions "copyright notices as contained in the Typefaces," and all the stuff you usually see when dealing with plain ol' copyrighted stuff. In a paragraph unoriginally titled "Copyright," they say they retain full title and ownership of their Typefaces.

This looks to me as totally opposing the page you quoted and its snippets from the US law. Does it mean I can take advantage of their unsustainable EULA? Yay!

More to your point, it doesn't mention font usage in documents, either. They limit the number of machines a font can be installed on, they restrict font embedding in documents (PDFs, Flash...) and they don't want you to place more than 50% of the character set in a rasterized image. But they don't say anything about documents using (yet not embedding) their fonts, so I'd say this is another confirmation to your comment.

Re:Presensation

[williamhb]

A) This all fails the reasonable expectation test. It's not a contract if one of the parties could not reasonably have known what they were agreeing to. Or some technical interpretation of it. (The "reasonable person" using a font is not a computer expert, but an average joe with a wordprocessor)

B) A huge difference between this and modifying GPL code is that it is impossible to argue that a document is a derivative work of the font it was printed in. ..from A and B we can conclude...

C) If this ever went to court [incredibly unlikely], the result would be "oh, ok I'll substitute a different font" not "suddenly all my documents are GPL". So the GPL isn't met and nothing else gives a license to use the font - that just means the suee'd have to stop using the font, not that the document would magically become GPL'd. Chances of damages in this kind of ridiculous logic-chopping of how fonts are implemented in typesetting documents: not a lot.

And can you honestly see the copyright owner of a font chasing document writers? (After all, the person launching the suit has to have an "interest" in the case - they can't just be a bystander making mischief or the courts won't hear it).

Not that big an issue after all, then.

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly what he's saying. "Typeface" is the typographical term for the shape of the letters.

Re:Presensation

[Weirdofreak]

The way I see it, unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect. You aren't saying "use this font", you're saying "use a font named this".

Say two fonts come out with the same name, one GPL and one public domain. You might only know about the PD one, and use it in your document. The GPL obviously has no power, and nor can it do so when you give it to somebody who has only the GPL font. The only thing the document knows about the font is the name, which cannot be GPL'd.

It goes without saying that I am very much a totally real lawyer of the non-greedy-bastard vareity.

Re:Presensation

[mark-t]

So then why can't you legally freely distribute fonts that you pay an arm and a leg for from Linotype?

If it's not copyright law that's protecting them, then what is?

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright law is protecting the FONT FILE.

the TYPEFACE which is the SHAPE of the font created by the FONT FILE is not copyrightable.

You may not distribute a linotype font file, nor extract its spacing, kerning, name, and any other parts of what make it a unique file.

The typeface itself, the result which is in a document, is not copyrightable. Everything else is.

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people around here completely fail to READ what is written? From that FAQ:

A typeface is a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied in articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other cognizable combinations of characters.

A font is the computer file or program that is used to represent or create the typeface.

The FONT is copyrightable. It's what you called an 'electronic typeface file' which is redefining a term contrary to how the FAQ and original poster used it. the FONT and FONT FILE are the same thing and are the entire file used to represent or create a TYPEFACE. a TYPEFACE is by definition in the FAQ, the shape of the lettering ONLY.

You can copyright a FONT. as the faq and original poster says, You can't copyright TYPEFACES, end of story.

Re:Presensation

[orangesquid]

Yeah. Plus, the font belongs to a distinctly separate part of the document than the content or formatting. It's like, if microsoft included the gcc package with windows, sure, they would have to give a link to the source and any modifications they've made, but, they don't have to open-source the windows kernel, unless they used gcc code in the kernel itself. They can distribute both together, though.

If a document just had a note that said, this document includes GPL fonts that are distinct from the content and formatting, wouldn't that cover it? IANAL, so please correct me if i'm wrong!

Re:Presensation

[benjamindees]

can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?

I'd say yes. Avoiding this end result would have to mean that all programs that use libraries, or, let's say just one library, must be considered derived works of that library, even if only linked dynamically. Think about scripts even; are they derived works of the programs they call?

This would have to hold even for the kernel, or any generic interface for that matter, network protocols even, ipod buttons, sysv headers...

It seems as though the license that found the loophole in copyright has a loophole of its own. Goedel was right.

Re:Presensation

[potentiallyprofound]

"A huge difference between this and modifying GPL code is that it is impossible to argue that a document is a derivative work of the font it was printed in. ..from A and B we can conclude..." Sure, a text file is probably not going to be a derivative of the font, but how about a logo, or a poster layout, or an advertisement? In graphic design, at least in my experience, it would be very easy to argue that the final design itself is a derivative of the style of the font.

Re:Presensation

[anthony_dipierro]

The way I see it, unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect.

In the case of fonts, you're probably correct. But I'd go so far as to say that it can't have any effect in any case. Even if you embed the font in, you're only aggregating multiple works.

Re:Presensation

[WWWWolf]

So then why can't you legally freely distribute fonts that you pay an arm and a leg for from Linotype? If it's not copyright law that's protecting them, then what is?

Copyright tends to protect font files. It doesn't protect typefaces.

The font files you buy from {Lino,Mono,*}type are a) copyrightable graphical vector data (the font data part) and b) copyrightable computer software (the hinting part). The typeface itself is just the shape of the letters.

What you get when you rasterize this font is not copyrightable. You can type up a novel and typeset it in this font and the font vendor can't do a thing! Imagine the horror, the chaos, the multi-national havoc if people could copyright what the typefaces looked like! You couldn't do a thing! Everyone would need to make their own fonts that looked like garbage, or suffer from font licensing woes forever and ever and ever! Or maybe the concept of "open source" fonts would have really caught on that very instant...

You can go to flea market or some weird-cheap-computer-crap-mall and buy a CD-ROM full of million fonts for really cheap price. Those things are not the same things you can buy from Linotype by sending them a shipment of human limbs in return. Yet, they essentially have the same font shapes in them... just probably a) not with the same hinting code, if at all, and probably far too many vector handles and stuff like that, scales like shit, and b) different typeface name, changed due to trademark on the original typeface name.

That's about that. Is it clearer now?

Re:Presensation

[mark-t]

Yes. I understand now. Thank you.

Re:Presensation

[benjamindees]

unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect

Of course. That isn't even the issue here. The issue is that most word processors do hard code fonts. GPL fonts almost have to be hard coded because they aren't on the vast majority of machines.

Re:Presensation

[InvalidError]

Fonts are somewhat like a document's core library.

GCC and its core libraries are also GPL'd but GCC's terms explicitly limit the GPL's scope to exclude derived works (third-party code compiled and linked executables) from GPL coverage. Without this clause, writing closed-source commercial software for Linux would be practically illegal.

If using GPL'd fonts effectively GPL'd documents, GPL'd fonts would get ditched pretty quick since they would represent unnecessary liabilities.

With grey areas like these surrounding the GNU acronym, it is no wonder most companies approach anything related to it with extra caution. I generally keep my own projects GPL-free because I personally think the GPL is excessively restrictive... if I had to pick a license, I would go with a slightly stricter form of BSD's.

Re:Presensation

[eraserewind]

I disagree. If the control data for the document references the embedded font, I don't see how it can be just mere aggregation. Mere aggregation is including both in a zip file, and saying "the document looks nice with this font".

Re:Presensation

[shutdown -p now]

Shouldn't the same apply to linking with shared libraries?

"But, my binary loads the public domain version of libfoo! what do you mean there's none? there is, we developed it in-house for internal use. It just accidentially happens to be called libfoo.so, just like the GPL'd one. A pure coincidence."

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The issue is that most word processors do hard code fonts.

[Glances at Word document]

[Glances at OpenOffice.org Writer document]

Are you sure?

(Yes, many WPs can embed fonts in document files if requested, but I can't think of a single one that does it by default. And if you're using proprietary fonts that are covered by legal restrictions on distribution in your jurisdiction and you deliberately tell your WP software to embed them for distribution anyway, well, isn't that your problem?)

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Say you take a GPL-ed program and a non-GPL-ed program and burn them onto a CD. The "control data" in the ISO-9660 data structures reference the GPL-ed program. Does that mean that the non-GPL-ed program is now more than merely aggregated? No. So you're wrong too.

Re:Presensation

[Nikker]

The funny thing is that fonts are representations of data. In reality no more than just pictures. So if a paper was made using a GPL'd font then you must share the font its self not necessarily the sequence you represent them in. I could have a paper written in times new roman and change it to another.

Another thing to look at as well is when it is stored in binary format is the font its self stored as well? If not then as long it is not being displayed the font is not effecting it there is no real link other than a tag that may point to the font as a prefrence.

It would really depend on what the circumstances are if some one demanded you to reveal the contents of a document because it was believed it was written in a GPL'd font would the order matter or if it is not being displayed then what part of it is GPL'd since the font you chose to view it in has no lasting effect on the content?

Definately something that would have to be revamped and surely something that was unintentional other wise if this was to be publicized would kill the GPL if people make this occurance and the GPL congruent in thier minds.

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU's blanket statements about the ability to link to shared libraries most likely would not hold up in a court of law. It really depend how you are using libfoo not that you used it.

Re:Presensation

[mrchaotica]

Now glance at a PDF.

Here's an odd situation: the TeX or Docbook source for your document non-infringing, but the PostScript or PDF generated from it is! I guess it's like statically linking GPL'd libraries, except for documents...

Re:Presensation

[cfulmer]

Not a lawyer. Don't take my advice.

In the US, the copyright office is an office under the Congress, not an administrative body in the executive branch. What they say does not have the force of law.

Even when you looking at the US copyright act, it's not completely clear: Under section 102, fonts would be a "Pictorial, graphic or sculptural work" and then under section 113(b), you have to look at what the law looked like in 1977. And, it only gets messier from there. There was a concern that allowing a "useful work" to be copyrighted would effectively grant a long-term patent without all the patent formalities.

There has been one court case on the matter (Adobe Systems v. Southern Software) that found for Adobe. But, it was only a district court case and is somewhat contentious: http://www.smu.edu/csr/Sum98-4-Mezrich.pdf

Re:Presensation

[Drishmung]

You are wrong. Most egregiously wrong for someone whose addy is in Finland.

Europe has allowed typography to be copyright, whereas the USA has not.

Designing a good font is hard. Many, many hours of work by a talented artist. Prior to computers, this was all manual, and resulted in a set of designs to be cut into cold type.

Without copyright, anyone could take a printed sample, recut it (and bear in mind that the original font was cut from a picture), rename it (to avoid trademark---say, call it Swiss rather than Helvetica) and sell the font as their own.

In fact, that is allowed in North America. It has generally not been allowed in Europe

Re:Presensation

[Sj0]

Is the art I made in GiMP GPL? I used a filter, after all!

Re:Presensation

[VivianC]

So wait. If I use the Gimp to edit my pictures, they then fall under the GPL? If I wrote a document in OpenOffice, does it become GPL?

I think that a font is a tool like anything else. The product from that tool isn't under the GPL, but if you include that tool in another tool, that tool will be under the GPL.

Of course, IANAL.

Re:Presensation

[whereiswaldo]

With grey areas like these surrounding the GNU acronym, it is no wonder most companies approach anything related to it with extra caution. I generally keep my own projects GPL-free because I personally think the GPL is excessively restrictive... if I had to pick a license, I would go with a slightly stricter form of BSD's.

Except who would actually go after someone for innocently using a GPL font in their document? This is a bug in the license IMO. I doubt the intent was to force people to GPL their private documents just because they used GPL'd fonts. More likely the author just wanted people to help make the font better.

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

One cannot copyright a typeface, but one can copyright a font.

Re:Presensation

[|<amikaze]

That's even more interesting, because depending on the font, it may be have to be transformed into Postscript first. At this point, you're no longer redistributing the font at all, just a series of vectors that make text LOOK like that font. From earlier posts, I've gathered that you can't actually copyright the typeface itself. Where are we now?

Re:Presensation

[mrchaotica]

Although the document itself wouldn't be, the "series of vectors that make text LOOK like that font" would clearly be a derivative work of the source font file, and (also from earlier posts) it seems that the font file is what's copyrighted. I think we're at the same point we were before.

Re:Presensation

[m50d]

The iso-9660 filesystem makes sense without the gpl program there. A document with an embedded font may not.

Re:Presensation

[john-da-luthrun]

Reading the GPL, I can't see what the fuss is about. The discussion seems to have arisen from talking about "derived works" in a fairly loose sense - "If I create a document using a GPL-ed font, that work is derived from the font, so covered by the GPL" - rather than looking at the GPL itself and what it means by "derived works". What the GPL means by "derived works" is works created under section 2, which states that "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program..." So we're talking about programs that *modify* the GPL-ed original: in this case, modifications to the font itself. If you take the original font and modify it, then the modified font is covered by the GPL; it is a "derived work" in the GPL's sense of that term. However, using a font in a document does not modify that font in any way. The fact that one can loosely talk about a document being "derived" from the fonts used in it doesn't bring it within the scope of section 2 of the GPL. Finally, there is the issue of how a court would interpret the GPL if this issue were ever litigated. Certainly within the UK (I'm an English-qualified lawyer), it is inconceivable that any court would hold that documents created using GPLed fonts were therefore covered by the GPL. If the worst came to the worst, any English court (and I suspect in most other common law jurisdictions, such as the US) would almost certainly imply additional licence terms into the arrangement: "If you make a font available for use, then - in the absence of a very clear and strong statement to the contrary - there is *obviously* an implied licence for people to use that font, unmodified, in their documents, without restricting their rights in those documents".

Re:Presensation

[thezapper77]

To take the scripts thing a bit further, you come to websites using (just one example) phpMyAdmin... Is every site that uses this required to release their php scripts for not only accessing the database, but their general web design? Obviously the scripts aren't declared derived works, even though they technically *are*. What is the distinction and where does one side end and the other begin?

Re:Presensation

[cammoblammo]

Don't want to start calling anyone an insensitive clod, but how does copyright law outside the US affect this argument? Can fonts be copyrighted in, say, Chad?

And would this mean that documents created with an embedded GPLed font in Bangladesh would have the GPL virally attached, but if it was created in Peru there wouldn't be a problem?

Discrepancies... another unintended consequence of the GPL.

Re:Presensation

[Royster]

You can't embed the font file itself or substantial pieces of the data that created it in a document (such as a PDF) without permission from the owner, and it is there that GPL exceptions may be needed to prevent the entire document from becoming GPL.

That is complete and utter nonsense. It is a "mere aggregation" under the GPL. The GPL does not make a PDF or other embedded document format subject to the GPL.

Re:Presensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people around here completely fail to READ what is written?

You must be new here...

Re:Presensation

[amightywind]

I generally keep my own projects GPL-free because I personally think the GPL is excessively restrictive...

GPL puts software in perpetual freedom. That won't appeal to you if you want to keep open the option re-enslaving your software. History has shown the free software community that it is unwise to rely on less restrictive licenses.

Re:Presensation

[slavemowgli]

Even if it was found that your work was indeed a derivative work of a font, and even if it was somehow decided that the font face as such was indeed copyrighted (as opposed to the font file etc.), then that still wouldn't suddenly make your work GPL'ed. The only thing it'd mean would be that as long as you didn't change your work so it wouldn't be a derivative work of the font anymore, you could not legally distribute it without complying to the terms of the GPL. There is *NOTHING* that actually forces you to distribute it, though; you could just as well decide to not distribute it at all.

The idea that any work of yours (whether it's a program or something else) can be "forced" into a GPL'ed state against your (the copyright holder's) will is FUD that's typically spread by those who're opposed to FOSS and want other companies to believe that they'd be forced to give away their products for free if (for example) GPL'ed code was incorporated by one of the engineers working on it.

Re:Presensation

[WWWWolf]

Europe has allowed typography to be copyright, whereas the USA has not.

Thanks for the correction! I'm sorry, I was under the impression this thing had been mimicked here from US, too, but looks like US only shoves useless laws (like DMCA) down our throats and not laws that would benefit everyone (uncopyrightability of typefaces) =)

Quite interesting, really; in one university course I was in, the teacher insisted typefaces couldn't be copyrighted (Well, the whole discussion was very tangential and nobody knew for sure anyway. =) But that was the graphical design course; I did take the computing legal issues course and they didn't even mention font copyright issues there.

I actually went to check the law and noted the Finnish copyright law doesn't mention fonts at all, which would lead me to believe they are covered by the general copyright terms, then. I couldn't find Copyright Council's explanatory statement on fonts either (but I could find their statements on funny topics like copyrightability of carpets =)

Maybe I should write to the Copyright Council myself. Or bother Korpela®© about this. Maybe these people could explain exactly what's going on in here. =)

Re:Presensation

[slavemowgli]

You cannot be forced to license your works under a certain license against your will, not even if you include (for example) GPL'ed code in your work. The worst that could happen if it was indeed decided that your document is a derived work of the font would be that you'd have to cease distributing your document until you either exchange the GPL'ed font for another one or agree to put your document under the GPL.

However, that "if it was indeed decided that..." is a very big if, IMO. First of all, it could only possibly apply to electronic distribution of your document; if it was distributed in printed form, for example, there could be no issue as only the font (i.e., the actual file) is copyrightable, not the typeface (i.e., the shape of the glyphs used). And furthermore, it would require that you'd actually embed the font (that is, the file or font data derived from the file) into your document - merely telling the document processor to use font XYZ is not enough - IANAL, but I'd argue that this is similar to the distinction between linking to GPL'ed code and calling a GPL'ed program and parsing its output, for example.

And of course, you'd have to convince a court that a document actually can be seen as a work derived from the font, and that may well be pretty hard even if you did embed the font in your document - I personally would say that doing so merely constitutes an aggregation of the font with another work, a situation in which the GPL explicitely states that it does not apply, similar to how $some_linux_distro putting up ISO images for their distro does not mean that the ISO image as such must be GPL'ed just because it contains GPL'ed software .

Re:Presensation

[rev063]

Why do people keep on repeating this trope that inclusion of a GPL work in another work automatically makes it GPL?

There are only two options here:

Either the author of the embedding work has agreed to the terms of the GPL, in which case the embedding work must also be under the GPL. That seems pretty unlikely in the case of someone simply writing a document with a GPL font.

Or, the GPL work has been copied unlawfully (not under the terms of the GPL). This is going the case where someone has inadventently used a GPL font in a document. And since it is clearly inadvertent, the remedy (in the unlikely event of the font author and copyright holder choosing to sue) would most likely simply to switch to a non-GPL font.

But all your documents are NOT suddenly going to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, OK?

Re:Presensation

[SdnSeraphim]

I believe (I didn't look it up again), that the reason typefaces cannot be copyrighted has to do with the fear that by being able to copyright typefaces would allow the ability to deny freedom of the press. I can't remember the exact reasoning, but something like an owner of the typeface copyright (if it existed) could use their ownership to limit others' ability to print what they wanted.

Re:Presensation

[Weirdofreak]

Well, in that particular example, why are they distributing software made to link with something they developed in-house? It shouldn't be hard to show that it was intended to link with the GPL version.

More generally, if there are two versions, then they might or might not have a case. If the non-GPL one is largely unheard of, or no longer in active development they might be expected to statically link it - the biggest advantage of dynamic linking is security fixes, but if those aren't likely, there's less point. If it's widely used and still developed, then a note warning people not to use it if they have the GPL version might anull them of responsibility, provided it was obvious. If it's the GPL version that almost nobody uses, then they may be able to get away with it freely.

Although I guess that still applies back to fonts if you were intending the GPL coy to be used. Rats. You might be able to argue that the font could have been replaced with any other existing font, making the choice meaningless, but that seems more like an argument based on reason than law, and those don't have an impressive track record. I guess the other solution would be to change the font if you get a C&D, but that relies on using the font in a non-GPL work being a violation rather than the font making the work GPL by default. It would be illegal, but I doubt there's much that could be done. My expectations would be the former, especially if the document was explicitly licensed under something else, but again, the Law moves in mysterious ways.

Re:Presensation

[jonbryce]

The only thing that is copyrightable is the computer program that draws the font on the screen/paper.

If you run this program and use the output of it to create a postscript document, then distributing the postscript document is not infringment.

Seems a little silly to me.

[Future Man 3000]

Just my opinion, but a document isn't a program, and when you distribute a document you are ipso fatso distributing the source (or everything you need to "compile and run" the document.)

While I would like to see clarification, this seems like an attack on the GPL...

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[cbiffle]

Fonts are programs, as odd as that may sound. Postscript fonts are the obvious examples here, but Truetype fonts are also interpreted bytecode.

Whether or not documents are programs is debatable, but they are information that makes a computer behave a certain way. They take interpreter software (your reader software), but then, so does Java or Perl.

So if you're sufficiently nutty (and if you're involved in interpreting the GPL, you will be), using a font in a document is a lot like linking.

Now, you're right, generally you do distribute the 'source.' However, it's possible to embed fonts into a document (in a PDF, for example) and strip out the unused characters, which wouldn't be a full copy of the source. Moreover, you could print or otherwise rasterize the document, thereby losing the font source -- which is basically equivalent to compiling the source into binaries.

IMHO, this is all really insane. But I don't release code under the GPL anyway.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[AvitarX]

Well, it would be nice to be able to distrbute a confidential document with GPL fonts, it would also be nice to distribute one without the GPL (for example a one page letter would be real awkward with a long liscense attached.

The source is not the only thing required to be attached to the GPL, the right to redistribute is not always a good thing to give to people (medical records etc.).

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[ComputerSlicer23]

The GPL requires that you put no further limitations on the re-distribution of said document.

I'll also point out that for a LaTeX document, I'm not giving you the prefered source format. If I generated the document from LaTeX source, and gave you the PDF version with an embedded GPL'ed font, you could easily claim I didn't give you the "preferred format". If I printed the document and handed it to you, that's not in electronic format, which is against the GPL (I'd have to at the very least give you a written offer for the document in electronic format good for at least 3 years if I remember the clauses correctly).

You couldn't print Trade Secrets in a font that is GPL'ed, as it would inheriently have more limitations added to it that the GPL doesn't allow.

Personally, I think GPL'ing a font is a lot like me saying I'm GPL'ing the blueprints to my house. It doesn't make any sense. I suppose it makes some, in the context of a derived work. However, I'm fairly doubtful it'd stand up to scruity in court. It probably means you are a copyright infringer, but as a license, it's fairly incoherent when applied to a font.

Kirby

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

> You couldn't print Trade Secrets in a font that is GPL'ed, as it
> would inheriently have more limitations added to it that the
> GPL doesn't allow.

You could certainly print them. By printing, all you are preserving of the original font is its typeface, and not the binary file.

Font typefaces are inherently not copyrightable so no copyright, GPL or otherwise, applies to the shape of the letters in a printed document. The original font file may be gpl'd, but the typeface created from that file is inherently more free than BSD.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Mathness]

Fonts are programs, as odd as that may sound. Postscript fonts are the obvious examples here, but Truetype fonts are also interpreted bytecode.

Really?

Fonts are data, it is that simple. A font file contains information about the looks of letters, numbers etc.
A program can then read that data and generate a (graphic) output.

Whether or not documents are programs is debatable, but they are information that makes a computer behave a certain way. They take interpreter software (your reader software), but then, so does Java or Perl.

Not really, documents are data (you can't execute them either, just like fonts).
True some documents might contain special data, which some software can use to run macros/programs. Note that it is the software used to open the file, and not the file, that runs the special data (embedded code, if you will).

As has already been pointed out in other posts, using a GPL tool doesn't make the result/product/etc. GPL.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Threni]

> IMHO, this is all really insane. But I don't release code under the GPL anyway.

Yeah, genuine freeware is a lot simpler. Dodgy people/companies are going to rip you off anyway, and the good guys will probably give you a mention in their docs or credits if you give a shit.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[iamnotanumber6]

"ipso fastso" - hee hee.

well it depends what you mean by 'document'. i mean, if you use a gpl'ed word processor to write something, what you write isn't gpl. that would be ridiculous. and it's the same for fonts. if you print out your document, no problem. or, if you specify that something should be printed in a certain font.

but if you embed the actual fonts, eg. postscript font files, inside your document file, you have to include copyright notice and follow the gpl in distributing it. i.e., distributing the font files. not what you wrote. they don't get linked together, they can always be separated out.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[iamnotanumber6]

i don't think printing/rasterizing is anything like compiling source into binaries. if that was true, you would be able to take a printed-out document and use it to print other documents in the same typeface. the copyright is on the code (eg. postscript) that generates the type. once you print it, you lose the code completely, binary or source, it's gone. what you have left is an expression of the code's working.

if i write a calculator software, i don't get to have copyright on all the calculations you do with it.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[DoctorFrog]

Moreover, you could print or otherwise rasterize the document, thereby losing the font source -- which is basically equivalent to compiling the source into binaries.

That would effectively turn it into a simple typeface, not a program, and the typeface itself is not copyrightable.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[suitepotato]

Fonts are programs, as odd as that may sound. Postscript fonts are the obvious examples here, but Truetype fonts are also interpreted bytecode.

Of course, by this logic, so are Applesoft shape tables and every vector graphic because they tell other code through interpretation what to do, ie, tell it which direction to move and light up a pixel and in what color, etc.

Come to think of it, so too would commands given to people and things as they are interpreted instructions and thus programs of a sort, even if run on the buggiest operating system known. I wonder which dog instructor licenses the "heel" instruction. Am I violating IP by not publishing the source code when I tell my co-worker to "knock it off"? Can I just make a text file availible on a web site?

IMHO, this is all really insane.

No argument there at all.

Hey Slashdotters, did this reply get rendered in a GPL font on the machine in front of you? Feel free to use it. Just remember to publish the souce code and consider, will you be publishing it because I instructed you to and you interpreted the instruction or because you were supposed to?

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Nikker]

Anyway does't the GPL only require the source be handed out when the software(or document in this case) is handed out.

Well when was the last time you gave someone a document in full view where they could distinguish the font and did not allow them to read the text on the paper?

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[mysidia]

Fonts are data, it is that simple. A font file contains information about the looks of letters, numbers etc. A program can then read that data and generate a (graphic) output.

All programs are data, and Postscript is a programming language.

As has already been pointed out in other posts, using a GPL tool doesn't make the result/product/etc. GPL.

But it just might... see the GNU General Public License contains this paragraph near the beginning:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

But if one embeds the fonts in a document, like a PS or a PDF file, you're intrinsically including the program...

Yet if one prints the document, the program is not stored on the page.. the paper will just contain all the glyphs which were made by running the program, in a particular order. Unless the Glyphs themselves were based on the program itself......

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Limburgher]

ipso fatso? Is that latin for "beer gut"? :)

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[iamnotanumber6]

no, the gpl would require that you put no limitations on the re-distribution of the *fonts* you distribute in your document, not what you write in it. which is basically meaningless, because you can just say "go download the original font here".

the *text* that you write can't be considered a derivative work of the font you write or print it in. that would mean adobe and microsoft would have copyright on pretty much everything written in the world today.

so of course you can print trade secrets in a gpl font, just as easily as you can with a commercial copyrighted font.

if you modify and distribute a gpl *font*, that's a derivative work that you can't restrict redistribution of and must give source code for. but that's less of a limitation than a commercial font, that you are not allowed to modify or distribute at all. and it still doesn't give anyone the right to copy your text.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fonts are programs, as odd as that may sound. Postscript fonts are the obvious examples here, but Truetype fonts are also interpreted bytecode.

Really?

Actually, the bulk of Truetype fonts is many sets of bezier curves. You could call that interpreted code, but I think it'd be a stretch.

The hinting for rendering at low resolutions is a different matter. That really is a very special-purpose bytecode.

And Postscript, well that's all code.

documents are data (you can't execute them either, just like fonts).

So is a Java jar code? A .NET executable? Is an executable still code if it's running on an emulator? What if the target processor no longer exists? What if it never existed? And then what if it is someday created?

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[geoffspear]

You're confusing freeware with public domain. Freeware is software given away at no cost. It may or may not be open source; often it's completely proprietary copyrighted software.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[harves]

Where does the GPL say that you need to provide a full copy of the source? If I take part of some GPL project and use it, I only need to provide source for *that* part.

As for rasterisation, I agree. But so long as the components of the font that you use are included, you should be fine.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[Narchie Troll]

If you merge GPL code into your program, your entire program must now be licensed under the GPL.

Re:Seems a little silly to me.

[LuxFX]

So if you're sufficiently nutty (and if you're involved in interpreting the GPL, you will be), using a font in a document is a lot like linking.

Except it's not the document that's doing the linking, it's the program that is displaying the document. So, if I used a GPL font in Word, which uses the MFC font rendering tools, does that mean that Windows is now under the GPL?

Internal?

[HRbnjR]

How does this effect "internal corporate communications"? It is my understanding that you are allowed to use and modify GPL licensed software *internally* without having to release your changes.

Re:Internal?

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

Yeah, I like your line of thinking....

Consider also, the GPL does not force you to distribute to EVERYONE, only the people who have received binaries from you. This would be the obvious case when passing a text document around. Like all other GPL code, the receipients can consider if they want to pass it on further.

I really don't see this as a problem. There's no way that they could possibly mean that all your documents would need to be made available for everyone. Why, the only way that everything you write could be immediatly available for download by everyone would be to use a Windows machine!

Re:Internal?

[Michalson]

See the article here a week back about what the GNU folks in charge of the GPL are writing into the next version. Combined with the new interpretation of GPL fonts they're coming up with, it's going to make even normal OSS proponents start to get really scared of the damage GNU can do to the community.

Re:Internal?

[Anonymous Coward]

See the article here a week back about what the GNU folks in charge of the GPL are writing into the next version.

The story talks about what the FSF are "looking at a proposal". Your claim that they are writing it into the GPL are utterly false. They are looking at a proposal. Did you expect them to simply ignore suggestions?

Combined with the new interpretation of GPL fonts

What new interpretation? The applicability of the GPL to fonts is straightforward and certainly nothing new.

Sounds to me like you're on an anti-FSF mission, and you are twisting the facts out of all proportion.

Re:Internal?

[m50d]

Depends if the corporation is seen as one person. I'd guess it isn't, since a corporation isn't allowed to internally distribute extra copies of windows to itself without buying licenses for them, is it? So you'd have to at least offer to provide source.

Re:Internal?

[yesteraeon]

Yes, but AFAIK once you have distributed a GPL'd work you CANNOT place restrictions on how the recipient of that work can further distribute it.

Having said that I think it's a very good point that distributing a document with a GPL'd font internally within an organization would NOT force you to distribute to anyone in the outside world.

However, the problem arises if you do want to share the document with only SOME people in the outside world. If you give the work to someone external, does the GPL force you to grant licence to that person to redistribute as he sees fit? I don't know, but that's the real question.

Re:Internal?

[menace3society]

When has that ever stopped GPL opponents from raising hell about it? Not only does it not count as distribution, even if it did, the corporation already has the source somewhere so it doesn't matter anyway. BUT, some people will say anything, even lie through their teeth, to make the GPL look bad and protect their business model.

Re:Internal?

[bahwi]

You but liceneses for machines, if you have two computers at home you still need two liceneses for both PCs, even though you're still one person. Ditto if you get an extra laptop or another PC.

Re:Internal?

[Cylix]

Yeah,

Then of course, just because you compile programs with GCC or write a script that uses the PHP interpreter does not make it open source.

I think this story should be -2 Troll

I really don't understand how someone reaches the belief that a font would require the document to be open source as well.

Unless you are storing your fonts inside the document itself.

Re:Internal?

[CodeBuster]

Technically this is not correct. If you use GPL software in your solution or source code then you all of the source code and improvements become subject to the GPL. Hypothetically speaking, if the project is kept secret inside the company and nobody outside the company knows about the modifications then nobody outside the company will think to ask for the source code. However, practically speaking, if the modifications are valuable, the information would leak sooner or later and the company would then be required to release the source code to anyone that asked for it. The GPL does not require you to publicize changes, but it does require you to relinquish the source code if somebody asks. In such a case you may charge a nominal fee, but the fee can be no more than the cost of physical media or transfer fees such as paper, blank CDs or DVDs, postage if applicable, and the like. For my part I have always wondered what would happen if a company flouted the restrictions of the GPL and dared the open source community to see them in court. Who would serve as the plaintiff and if damages were paid where would they go?

Re:Internal?

[Andrewkov]

So what happens to my document if I use Microsoft's fonts? What license is then forced on me? This is total anti-GPL FUD.

Re:Internal?

[mindstrm]

But it does seem to, if you read it.

Look at it this way. The fonts themselves are the copyrighted work, the look shape and feel of them, and the source files that generate them. Using them in your own creative work makes your work a derived work.

It's not at all the same as compilinig code with GCC. The output of GPL software is not GPL itself.. but in the case of fonts, the completed work includes the fonts, in fact, is made up of them.

It sounds rediculous, right? We all agree on that, but to use that as some kind of negative aspec to fhte GPL is ludicrous... the GPL was made for source code of computer software, not fonts. Applying the language of the GPL to other domains is bound to have some caveats.

Re:Internal?

[Red Alastor]

Distribute the fonts everywhere in your organization (your employees are free to redistribute them if they wish). Then make a policy against embeding fonts in documents.

Re:Internal?

[kotj.mf]

The fonts themselves are the copyrighted work, the look shape and feel of them...

Wrong.

The "look and feel" of a series of squiggles on a page/screen is a typeface, not a "font."

Which is why I could create a font that exactly mimics the look and feel of Comic Sans, call it Comik Sanz, and use it at 48pt in all of my business correspondence.

Cite.

Re:Internal?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Parens added: "distributing (a document with a GPL'd font internally within an organization) would NOT force you to distribute to anyone in the outside world", just because distributing internally isn't distributing. If you are a corp., then as an individual, you are "distributing" it to yourself. That form of internal distribution appears to not be distribution in the meaning of the word which would cause the GPL to come in to play.

Re:Internal?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually if you distribute sourcecode with binaries, then you only have to be concerned about the people you distributed to.

However, if you distribute binaries only, then you have to give "any third party" the source code when they ask. It doesn't matter that you never gave *me* any binaries, because you did distribute just binaries. And the only way you can be legal about your binary only distribution is to abide by the GPL.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

Re:Internal?

[lahvak]

Unless you are storing your fonts inside the document itself.

That's exactly the problem! Some formats (e.g. pdf) let you include fonts in the document, so that the document will display the same way everywhere.

The question is whether a document with embedded font constitutes a derivative work.

Re:Internal?

[Tim C]

So what happens to my document if I use Microsoft's fonts?

Read the licence. I haven't, but if it's anything like the licence for their other, similar products (eg the redistributals that come with VS) you have a licence to redistribute them as part of your app/document but acknowledge that ownership remains with MS, etc etc.

That is, you get to use them as you would expect to be able to use them, with no nasty surprises. You carry on with your anti-MS FUD though.

Re:Internal?

[16K Ram Pack]

I issue a lot of documents as OOo converted to pdf. I didn't know that this could be an issue (not sure whether the fonts used are native Windows/non-GPL fonts or other).

Sounds mighty confusing...

Re:Internal?

[m50d]

I normally buy a physical cd with an operating system on it (it was sold to me as the cd, so I don't care what the EULA says. I'll install it an alternate way, and since I'm using the product in its intended fashion and the way it was sold to me for use using it doesn't indicate my acceptance of the license. And I don't need a license to install it, because the only copies I make are essential for the intended running of the software, which means they're not infringing copyright). Therefore I can install it on as many computers as I want. Theoretically, I would have thought a corporation can do the same.

ascii

[Anonymous Coward]

Plain ascii text is all that you ever need. Use whatever font(s) came with your OS.

And you say GPL isnt viral

[nurb432]

If this isnt an prime example right in your face, i dont know what is.

BSD type licensing is free, and isnt viral..

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[El Cubano]

If this isnt an prime example right in your face, i dont know what is.

BSD type licensing is free, and isnt viral..

Please quit spreading FUD. The only thing that this shows is that application of the GPL to non-software has some issues. Ever wonder why the GNU Free Documentation License was written? Granted, BSD-type licenses lend themselves to be applicable to a wider range of content, but that is just incidental, it was not designed into the license.

Basically, your options are:

• Use a different license (BSD, CC, Artistic, etc.)
• Support the creation of a GNU Free Font License (possibly based on the LGPL)
• Or just use the LGPL (though, I am not sure if this solves all of the issues).

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[Monkelectric]

The GPL simply codifies that you must give to recieve. Why do you think BSD has been outpaced by Linux/GPL?

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[evanbd]

It still isn't viral, in any way. You still have to *voluntarily* place the GPL license on your code or document in order for it to be GPL. It isn't overtly contagious. That said, there are plenty of cases, including this one, where distributing works based on GPL works without placing the derivative works under the GPL is a copyright infringement. But it's just that -- unlicensed distribution; it doesn't get placed under the GPL without your consent.

Can we stop with the uneducated FUD now, please? It would be really nice if people actually read the license on occasion.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is viral because copyright is viral.

If copyright wasn't viral, the GPL couldn't be viral.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason people spread this FUD as you call it is that we want individuals to understand exactly what they are doing when they release code under the GPL, and also that the option to use the BSD liceanse instead exists.

So you quit spreading your "FUD" you tool.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[evanbd]

Nothing against BSD, I've made use of it, but I prefer the GPL and want to make sure things are kept clear about it.

There is exactly one way for code you wrote to end up under the GPL: you put it there explicitly. No other way. None.

That said, if you used GPLed code in writing it, and don't put it under the GPL, you're committing copyright infringement. You don't have permission to use GPL code in non-GPL projects (unless there's some dual license thing going on or something). So yes, releasing a font under the GPL is going to restrict its use. But, if you didn't realize the font was GPLed, your document isn't suddenly GPL -- you just aren't allowed to distribute it, because you don't have a license to redistribute the font, since you're not using the GPL. So, if someone releases a non-GPL document using a GPL font, the normal course would be for someone to point it out to them, and them to take corrective action (possibly with an intermediate legal proceeding). That corrective action could be to stop distribution of the document, use a different (non-GPL) font, or to put the document under the GPL. But there are no examples of someone being forced to GPL code they didn't want to.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[FidelCatsro]

so basicaly all the license would need to say is (IANAL)

• 1:You may use this font with anything
• 2:If you alter this font in any way you must release the changes back to the community with full source code/material along with this license, of which the following changes are part. This is exempt in the case of purely internal use
• 3:Use of this font in a document is totaly unrestricted , if you wish to include this font with a document you are free to do so on the condition that if you have altered the font in any way you release the changes back to the community ala clause 2.
• 
  
  Would just about cover it
  Though i doubt its needed , as honestly is the font not a dependancy of the document viewer and has very little to do with the actual document

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[drmerope]

Are you really that partisan in favor the GPL? People have nasty habit of conflating issues and using the wrong words and argument to support their points but that does not directly imply their conclusion is false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

The LGPL exists for a reason.

Certainly, you're making a choice when you "touch" GPL licensed IP. No one "forces" you to touch GPL licensed IP.

To understand what really gets people concerned about the GPL, you have to understand what they mean by "force" and "coercion"

Man has long since past the point when one individual can practically recreate the world as a sole creator. Almost everything made today builds upon what has been made before. As more and more GPLing takes place the hold-outs increasingly get shoved into the corner. This is a form of coercion. Sure nothing forces them to join into the GPL fun but to argue they have a genuine choice is a little disingenuous.

GPL coercion is about the barriers to entry resulting from the isolating effect of the GPL licensing terms.

There is a very applicable quote here. "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

If you pay close attention, you'll notice that I'm using the language of monopoly here.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[lahvak]

This isn't example of anything. GPL is not any more viral than any other license.

All that GPL does is give you a permission to use certain copyrighted work. It says you can use it if you adhere to certain conditions. If you use the work and don't adhere to the conditions, you do so without permission and thus you are commiting a copyright violation. That is exactly the same as with any other license. If that happens, you can be sued and forced to
1) pay damages, if there are any
2) stop using the copyrighted work as part of your own work.

That means you may have to pay up and replace the GPLed code by something else. That's exactly the same as with any other license. You can NEVER be forced against your will to release your own work under the GPL.

The only difference between GPL, BSD style license and proprietary licenses are the conditions you have to satisfy to be allowed to use the software. BSD style license is more lenient thatn GPL, which is more lenient than a proprietary license.

GPL never makes you loose the copyright or even control of your own code. For example, you can take the exact same code and use it in a GPLed project and in a proprietary project, as long as the code is yours. What you cannot do is use somebody elses GPLed code in your proprietary project without their permission.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral

[szelus]

You don't have permission to use GPL code in non-GPL projects (unless there's some dual license thing going on or something).

To be precise. You do have permission to use GPL code in e.g. closed-source projects, you only do not have permission to distribute the resulting binary program.

I'm not sure thats right...

[Artega VH]

From the GPL Faq

As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. (emphasis mine)

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Artega VH]

After reading my own comment I think I see the problem...

Also from the GPL Faq is that you need to specifically add the exception text to the license. If this was not done then yes there is a problem.. Otherwise then there wouldn't be... As per usual the slashdot blurb is a bit sensationalist...

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[truedfx]

You forgot to quote this part:

To use this exception, add this text to the license notice of each file in the package (to the extent possible), at the end of the text that says the file is distributed under the GNU GPL:

It clearly doesn't apply if a font is distributed under the GPL without such an addition.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read that FAQ answer? It lists an experimental addition. The normal GPL doesn't cover this.

The bit that you emphasise is the bit that grants an exception for fonts. Now go read the GPL. It's not in there.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[shellbeach]

Also from the GPL Faq is that you need to specifically add the exception text to the license. If this was not done then yes there is a problem.. Otherwise then there wouldn't be... As per usual the slashdot blurb is a bit sensationalist...

Actually, the important point in the FAQ you quoted is that it only applies to embedded fonts. Thus the /. blurb is completely wrong AFAICS - you can use the font without any license restrictions being imparted on your own documents provided you don't embed it in the document. So while this may be an issue if you send off artwork to a printhouse, if you don't embed the fonts but just include a copy of each font (and relevant license info) along with the artwork I'm guessing that should be fine.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[fm6]

The only quibble I have with that is that it's classified as an "exception". In order to be bound by the GPL, you have to somehow actively agree to it. Like when you download GPL software, you're tacitly agreeing to the GPL in exchange for using the software.

Now, when you use a font in a document, you don't usually embed that font file in your document file. (In some cases, this is possible, for the sake of portability, but it's not a widely-used feature.) Usually, "using a font" just means adding the font name to your document file. If a simple reference to GPLed software is enough to require a license, then Bill Gates assents to the GPL every time he uses the word "Linux". Which is absurd.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Mr. Slippery]

It clearly doesn't apply if a font is distributed under the GPL without such an addition.

No, it's not clear.

"Font licensing is a complex issue which needs serious consideration," FSF says, and suggests the additional clause to avoid the complexity.

They're not saying "All your documents are belong to us unless you use this clause," they're saying "Somebody might try to claim `All your documents are belong to us' unless you use this clause."

I don't think anyone could successfully argue that using a font to which copyright applies makes a text document a derivative work. On the other hand, if you are creating a work of graphic design in which font figures prominently, things might be more complex.

(Have copyright claims on a font ever been tested in court? There seem to be any number of rip-offs and clones of any popular font.)

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if you add this exception using a GPL font whose license doesn't include the exception? Do we get an exception exception because of the exception of the exception in the exception font?

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Elwood P Dowd]

But the main BS angle from the writeup is this:

it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL. There are a lot of consequences here, such as internal corporate communications.

Even if using a GPL font requires all documents using that font to be GPLed, that doesn't make your business document GPLed. It means that you cannot legally distribute your business document except under the GPL, which is very very different. If you illegally distribute your document not under the GPL, you've committed a copyright violation. That still doesn't put it under the GPL. It just means that you will have to stop publishing the document until you stop using the infringing copyrighted material, and you may be liable for the infringement you've already done. Still, the GPL has not been applied to anything you've produced.

This just means that GPLed fonts are unusable for non-GPLed documents, not that you'll accidentally GPL your document. Assuming that it's true in the first place. So stop using the unusable fonts, and you'll be fine.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[truedfx]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that that paragraph is irrelevant if it isn't added, nothing more. I didn't post my opinion on whether GPL-licensed fonts have any effect on documents using those fonts.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Anonymous Coward]

What??!? "ven if using a GPL font requires all documents using that font to be GPLed, that doesn't make your business document GPLed. It means that you cannot legally distribute your business document except under the GPL, which is very very different. If you illegally distribute your document not under the GPL, you've committed a copyright violation. That still doesn't put it under the GPL. It just means that you will have to stop publishing the document until you stop using the infringing copyrighted material, and you may be liable for the infringement you've already done. Still, the GPL has not been applied to anything you've produced." DOes that mean if you write a document, say, a book, and it is under the GPL because of a font, you can't legally sell the book?

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Elwood P Dowd]

Sure, you'd just have to change the font. I'm sure books have been published with unlicensed fonts before, as an error, and the publisher & the type clearinghouse figured out the value of the error and ironed it all out after the fact.

Does anyone know of any lawsuits involving typefaces used without permission from the copyright holder? I'm sure there have been a few.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Mr. Slippery]

The only quibble I have with that is that it's classified as an "exception". In order to be bound by the GPL, you have to somehow actively agree to it. Like when you download GPL software, you're tacitly agreeing to the GPL in exchange for using the software.

Incorrect.

The GPL does not regulate your right to use the software, only to copy, distribute, and make derivative works: Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.

And you don't have to actively agree to it - but if you don't, by default under copyright law you have no right to copy, distribute, or derive from the work. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[fm6]

And you don't have to actively agree to it - but if you don't, by default under copyright law you have no right to copy, distribute, or derive from the work.

So I don't have the right to copy, distribute, or derive GPLed fonts. The question is, am I doing any of those things just by saying <font face="Stallman Bold">? I submit the answer is "no".

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Brandybuck]

Not being able to embed fonts is a very draconian restriction. Very few commercial proprietary fonts have this restriction, which will end up making GPL fonts *less* free than most proprietary fonts.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Brandybuck]

It doesn't mean any of that at all. This is merely the case of some narrow brained legalistic schmuck pulling controversies out of his ass.

The GPL only applies to the document if the document is a derivative work of the fonts. It is not. I fully understand that most GPL advocates want the word "derivative" to cover every possible use of the work, but the law say otherwise. Using a GPL font in your document doesn't encumber your document!

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[shellbeach]

Not being able to embed fonts is a very draconian restriction. Very few commercial proprietary fonts have this restriction, which will end up making GPL fonts *less* free than most proprietary fonts.

Agreed, which is probably why the GPL FAQ (quoted in the grandparent to my original post) suggests adding an addendum to the GPL that allows the font specifically to be embedded without restriction. It's obviously not an intentional aspect of the GPL (they haven't deliberately set out to be draconian), just an unintended consequence of a license which has always had software code as a focus, rather than artwork.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[orasio]

Although this is not the case, such a restriction wouldn't be that strange.

The whole idea behind the GPL is freedom, but that's too wide a term. The GPL is not about freedom for the distributor, it's about freedom for the user, at the expense of the distributors.

Even if you weren't allowed to distribute non-GPLd docs with GPLd fonts, it would still be fair. The idea is to share with the people that share. If you don't want to share, there's a lot ther fonts you can use.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[Mr. Slippery]

The question is, am I doing any of those things just by saying ? I submit the answer is "no".

Sure, for markup languages. But your Postscript or PDF output can embed fonts, which makes the situation complex.

Re:I'm not sure thats right...

[fm6]

Actually, you can embed fonts in web pages and word processor files too. But people usually don't.

I certainly accept that embedding a GPLed font in any file, including a document, is a use governed by the GPL. But that's not the issue. From the post that started the Scribus thread (and this whole discussion):

... using gpl licensed fonts in a document makes the document a derived work of the font and therefore, subject to the gpl.

Is simply referencing a font name in a file (which is what "using a font" usually means), "derivation"? That's absurd.

Infectious with open sores.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL."

*cue GPL is a cancer comments*

Doesn't make sense

[TelJanin]

Using a GPL-ed font in a document would be just like using a GPL-ed IDE, I would think. Why would the license of the tools affect the license of the finished product?

Re:Doesn't make sense

[evanbd]

Linking a document against a font sounds a lot like linking a binary against a library, and if you want to allow that (as in, for example, an IDE), you want to be using the LGPL, so I guess it sorta makes sense. For example, glibs is LGPL iirc, and the Linux kernel adds a special exemption for closed code making system calls.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a GPL-ed font in a document would be just like using a GPL-ed IDE, I would think.

That depends what type of document.

When you create a program with an IDE, does the IDE get included in the program it creates? No.

When you create a document that uses a certain font, does that font get included in the document? In many cases, yes.

I'm surprised that this is so controversial, it seems plainly obvious to me. Are you copying fonts? Then you need a license. The GPL is one such license.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[TelJanin]

Most documents (eg, OpenOffice and MS Office formats) simply say which font to use. They do not actually include the font itself. This is no different from an IDE including a little "Created in XXXX" comment in the source code.

If it were a format that actually included the font itself, but just applied the saved font to the text, the point still stands. Distributing the document at all would distribute the code for the font.

If you were going to take the GPL-ed font, use it in a document, and then print the document, then you might be distributing without source code. But if it's being used for intra-company memos, this action still doesn't violate the GPL. If you were using it in something like a promotional flyer, then the GPL has been violated - but HOW would you possibly know?

It seems like the only way this part could be violated would be practically undetectable.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[TelJanin]

When you link an executable against a library, you're still not including the GPLed library - just it's file name (eg, libgtk+-2.0.so). Somebody else could come along, create a stand-in GTK+ library, and let your program run against that.

That's what happens in a lot of cases with fonts. The original creater of the document may have used GPL fonts, he's only violating the GPL if he includes the fonts in the document in such a way that they are unextractable.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[m50d]

Far closer to a gpl-ed library, because the font is part of the finished product - the letters of the font are in the document. No ide code ends up in the finished program

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Most documents (eg, OpenOffice and MS Office formats) simply say which font to use. They do not actually include the font itself.

I am aware of that. That's why I said "in many cases, yes" rather than a simple "yes".

If you were going to take the GPL-ed font, use it in a document, and then print the document, then you might be distributing without source code.

No. The appearance of the typeface is not subject to copyright (a principle long-established wrt. fonts, see things like Helvetica vs Arial). A print-out would not be considered to be a copy of the font.

It seems like the only way this part could be violated would be practically undetectable.

People say the same thing about GPL violations with source-code.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's GNU/Linux, and don't you forget it. Glory to our one true God Stallman and his mighty GNU toolset.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[anthony_dipierro]

When you create a document that uses a certain font, does that font get included in the document? In many cases, yes.

But that's just an aggregation, and "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

Re:Doesn't make sense

[BobPaul]

the letters of the font are in the document. No ide code ends up in the finished program

Only which font to use and how to apply it (eg, which size of the font, style of the font, etc) are included, unless you embed the font into the document (ala pdf). Most of the time when documents are saved the font is not embeded, so the font is not part of the finished product... it just might not look quite right if the recipient doesn't have that particular font installed.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's just an aggregation

What is your basis for saying so? A PDF is a bunch of pages with lines on, and embedded fonts constitute how some of those lines are drawn. Embedded fonts in this case certainly seem like an integral part of the document to me, at least as integral as a library is to a program. In fact, the situations are so similar that I can't see how you could think otherwise.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[EvanED]

In fact, the situations are so similar that I can't see how you could think otherwise.

Because if the font were separated from the document you'd get a message saying "font such-and-so isn't present" and it'd default to some font that is present. If you lose one of the libraries distributed with a program, it stops working.

Here's my line of thinking here.

1. Suppose I create a document that doesn't embed the font. Does that make the document GPL? I don't see how it could, or any document using a copyrighted font wouldn't be distributable.

2. Suppose I create a document that DOESN'T use GPL'd font X at all. I then zip up font X with my document and distribute it. Does this make the document GPL? No, because this is clearly just aggregation.

3. What happens if I include a pointer in a document using font X saying where you can download the font, so that the reader can get it and install it, and see it as it was meant? I still don't see how the GPL+copyright law could be interpreted as requiring the document to be put into GPL.

4. What happens if I zip up the font with my document (with source), but it's still just the font you can download and the document that uses the font but doesn't embed it. In light of items #1-#3 above, I don't see how this could be illegal.

5. You now directly embed the font in the document. What is the distinction from #4 above?

If embedded fonts force the document to be GPL'd, where does the line get drawn? Between 3 and 4? Between 4 and 5? What's the distinction?

Re:Doesn't make sense

[jbolden]

Because if the font were separated from the document you'd get a message saying "font such-and-so isn't present" and it'd default to some font that is present

The question would then be is the document sensible and readable. For a plain english language font obviously yes. What about a specialized font that had symbols not present in other fonts? (Like th e IPA's linguistics symbols font, or the AMS's math symbols fonts, etc..)

I'd argue then that the combined work is derived and not just aggregated.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[anthony_dipierro]

What is your basis for saying so?

They're both completely separate works. The text makes perfect sense without the font, and the font makes perfect sense without the text.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[danila]

I'm surprised that this is so controversial, it seems plainly obvious to me. Are you copying fonts? Then you need a license. The GPL is one such license.

This is obvious. What isn't so obvious is whether the document is a derivative work. I'd say it isn't. If I write a Java program, that doesn't make it a derivative work based on the JVM, no matter whether I distribute it with or without said JVM. If I write a Visual Basic program, it doesn't become derivative work based on the runtime library, even if distribute them together.

It is wrong to claim that the document with embedded fonts is a derivative work based on the fonts. It is simply a container than contains my work and the fonts. Similarly to how I can pack my whole HDD to a .ZIP file and send it to you, without making all files GPLed, just because there was some GPL software there.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Just Some Guy]

No ide code ends up in the finished program

Maybe if you're using an IDE as a glorified programmer's editor. The line is not so clear with more sophisticated IDEs like KDevelop (or even Visual Studio) that feature automatic code generation. If I design a GUI with one of them, and it writes a substantial portion of the project, then I think you could make the case that IDE code does end up in the finished program.

I'd suspect that most such development environments include a specific disclaimer that allows you to write proprietary code with them. However, I've never thought to look before now so I have no idea whether that's the case.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[m50d]

The code that it generates is not the code of the IDE though, it's not code I had to compile to get kdevelop to work, it's other code. It's the output of kdevelop, which is a different matter, legally, like, I don't know, html produced by dreamweaver or some other visual web development program. Which the maker of the program has no claim to.

Question

[elid]

Why hasn't this clause been added to the official GPL itself? Who would want to require anyone who uses their fonts to make their program GPL'ed? That would seem very odd.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why hasn't this clause been added to the official GPL itself?

Probably because virtually nobody GPLs fonts, and those that do so probably don't want the exception.

all ur docs are belong 2 us

[Anonymous Coward]

all ur docs are belong 2 us

What would happen...

[CrackedButter]

if MS copied the windows source code and typed it up in MS word using a GPL font? :)

Re:What would happen...

[webloser]

if you tried to redistribute it you would be sued into oblivion for patent violations.

Re:What would happen...

[dokebi]

Obvious. Hilarity would insue.

Re:What would happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Microsoft is going to spend the time to retype the entire source code to Windows.

Re:What would happen...

[bcmm]

Then if for some reason they decided to distribute it, people would be allowed to modify it and create derivative GPL works to their hearts content. But why would MS distribute it?

Remember, you are only forced to release source if you release binaries. That's why you can change the source of a GPL app on your system to fix a bug without having to find an FTP server to take it. If you start handing out your modded version though, then you need to give out source as well.

I think I speak for a lot of GPL junkies when ...

[after]

... I say "SHIT! Rob, take the windows server raid arrays to my truck!

We use some GPL fonts here and there and in some PDF documents published on company website. Does this mean we need to provide PDF source code files?

Doubtful

[Ryvar]

This sounds a lot more like the usual Slashdot panic-attack than anything actually factual, and unlike the SCO case I think testing this in court would result in a significant weakening of the GPL. That said, if we assume for the moment that this is the case, I would pay a metric fuckton of money to hear Stallman try and defend it.

--Ryv

Re:Doubtful

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you're from, but round these parts we work in metric fucktonnes.

Re:Doubtful

[m50d]

I'll defend it. If it's my font, in that I hold the copyright, I can impose whatever conditions I like on you distributing documents made of it. I can say you have to stand on your head and whistle the national anthem whenever you distribute a copy of any document with my font in it. If you don't like it, find another font.

Re:Doubtful

[Anonymous Coward]

I would pay a metric fuckton
But what is that in imperial units?

Re:Doubtful

[dont_think_twice]

What exactly do you want Stallman to defend? That if a font creator applies the GPL to his font, the terms of the GPL apply to anyone using that font in their creation?

The GPL was created for software, not fonts. Applying it to fonts creates problems. I don't see how this reflects poorly on RMS.

Bummer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there goes the idea of the corporate world using linux on the desktop.

Copyright and fonts

[claes]

I have heard that fonts hold a special position when it comes to copyright legislation. Visual appearance of fonts can not be copyrighted, but font names can be.

This is a layman rumour, don't take my word for it, but since GPL builds upon copyright legislation, it could mean that the GPL license does not hold in this case.

Re:Copyright and fonts

[FooAtWFU]

The Wikipedia article on copyright states that a typeface is not copyrightable, though it may be patentable if it is novel enough.

Re:Copyright and fonts

[Interrupt18]

Microsoft has dozens of fonts patented. I assume it's the same for Adobe, etc.

Changing fonts

[BlacBaron]

If the font makers don't add the font exception clause to the font you want then, just change the font to one which has it (or one thats not GPLed). Having done that your document is presumably no longer a derivative work and no longer required to be distributed under the terms of the GPL. Also I'm sure there are millions of fonts out there with simple feel free to use this licenses (of course you may not like many of them).

What's a GPLed document?

[KFK - Wildcat]

I guess I'm not understanding what this is all about.

What exactly does it mean if a document is covered by GPL? That whomever it is distributed to need to have access to the source of the document?? Surely you're not required to make the document public, because there is no such clause in the GPL (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it only states that a program must be distributed with its source, or at least that the source must be made available, but there's nothing requiring its distribution).

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[bersl2]

I've seen all sorts of stuff out there that GPLed but shouldn't be, mostly plaintext and art.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plaintext I understand, but art can easily have a preferred format for editing. For example, the "source" for a PNG file might be an XCF file. In the PNG, you wouldn't have the ability to edit the image in the same way you would if you had the original XCF.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Senjutsu]

What exactly does it mean if a document is covered by GPL? That whomever it is distributed to need to have access to the source of the document??

Also, that they could make any changes they wanted to it and redistribute it in any fashion they wanted provided they extend those same rights to any recipients.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Linzer]

You are talking about the restrictive part of the license, but you are omitting the fact that the GPL is above all a free license.

In the case of a document, it says that anyone who is given the document is allowed to copy and redistribute it, and to modify it and distribute the modified version, granted that he keeps the original copyright notice and the GPL license.

This is a lot more freedom than that given by basic copyright law.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[mbaciarello]

Yes, I concur.

However, it's important to remember that GPL doesn't force free distribution on the owner's side. Companies will never be forced to release their internal docs just because they were accidentally GPL'ed, as the /. blurb might imply.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL clearly states it applies to computer programs only. A PNG file is not a computer program (unlike a outline font), so it would be a mistake to licence it under the GPL.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Linzer]

Well, suppose an employee gets a GPL'ed "internal document", then this employee is allowed to distribute it to anyone, even outside the company, so the document isn't internal anymore. And there is no way the company could forbid that in its contracts or internal rules, because then it would violate the GPL.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[mbaciarello]

Well, if the employee is allowed to distribute the document to anyone outside the company, we're not talking about internal docs any longer!

I agree, though, that a company might want to distribute a document to some companies, while keeping it secret from others. That could cause problems, yet I'm not sure whether selectively sending stuff to some persons actually falls under legal definitions for "distribution." For one, circulating a music CD within your family members doesn't, AFAIK.

Re:What's a GPLed document?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL clearly states it applies to computer programs only.

This is not true. For example:

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.

Next time you want to talk about what the GPL "clearly states", try reading it first.

Font Exception to the GPL

[negative3]

You can add the following text to create an exception when distributing the font:

"As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version."

This is and addition to the GPL, and is also an "experimental" addition.

I found it here: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html #FontException

What is GPL'd? The font or the text?

[Anonymous Coward]

Extensions to the font or the typeface family should be covered by the GPL. For example, if I extend a GPL'd font by adding additional characters I should have to respect the GPL.

The GPL should not have anything to do with the text that I have happened to render in a GPL'd font.

GPL != Panacea

[BlueJay465]

There are some things that the GPL should stay out of. This is a perfect case to demonstrate that the GPL is not the perfect solution for every situation. Hopefully this is a wake up call for all those who treat the GPL as gospel. Back to the drawing board for RMS, I suppose.....

Re:GPL != Panacea

[tomstdenis]

Yes, there is public domain as well ;-)

Hehehe.

I think *shock* the license should be product specific. Clearly a font and a PNG library are meant to be used differently. Why you'd use the GPL for both ...

If anything fonts should be LGPL since they're part of the document but you're not modifying them...

Tom

Not to mention GPL'd words

[LuxFX]

If you think it's bad that using certain fonts makes your documents 'open' -- then watch out for those GPL'd words! If you use words like "open," "free," or "fair" or phrases like "as in speech" or "as in beer" then your document will also fall under GPL licensing!

When asked for comments, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Well, we certainly don't know anything about 'open' or 'free,' and I'm pretty certain our company has never acknowledged the existance of the word 'fair.' We will be opening an investigation to make sure that other communist...uh...GPL'd phrases are not and will not ever appear in our literature."

How does this differ...

[pla]

Cmon, boys, you missed April 1st by a good 16 days, now...

Why would using a font make the end-product fall under the GPL?

First of all, if you haven't changed the font itself, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

Second, if you only use it for within an organization, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

Third, the license under which a given tool falls does not usually extend to what it creates - I can use GCC to compile non-GPL code, I can use GIMP to create non-GPL (or CC, in this case?) artwork, and I can use OO to produce non-GFDL documents.

So why would any of the above magically differ for a font?

Re:How does this differ...

[tomstdenis]

You're distributing a copy of the font inside the document. So if you [for instance] have whitepapers on your website you're distributing the font. That means you have to give the source to whatever you made with it away as well. Of course since you intend to give the document out anyways this has no bearing.

A different angle would be TeX documents... this means I would have to give out the source for the font and the TeX along with PDFs I give out. Again not the end of the world I guess.

Like you said I too can't see how this actually impacts on how people use tools. Perhaps this is more MSFT inspired FUD?

Maybe we should get the authors of the fonts to weigh in. I suspect they don't give a rats ass provided copyright has been attributed properly.

Tom

Re:How does this differ...

[m50d]

The font is a part of the finished document in a way the gimp isn't a part of a picture and gcc isn't a part of the code it makes. Under today's ridiculous copyright interpretation I can very much believe that having a font used in a document would mean the document was legally a derivative of the font.

Re:How does this differ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considered when you embed a font in Postscript or PDF.... ?

Re:How does this differ...

[Noksagt]

First of all, if you haven't changed the font itself, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

While your analogy holds true for LGPL, it doesn't for the GPL. ANY redistribution of GPLed software is bound by the GPL & that says that any DERIVED WORKS of GPLed software must also be GPLed. Which is why coders who are writing software under a license more restrictive than the GPL avoid GPLed libraries.

Re:How does this differ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Third, the license under which a given tool falls does not usually extend to what it creates - I can use GCC to compile non-GPL code

This is only because you're not using gcc on cygwin. GCC is GPL'ed but it links your code against a library that has a special exemption so it is not GPL'd.

In cygwin, gcc links against cygwin1.dll which is GPL'ed and you would have to GPL any program you compile and distribute: http://cygwin.com/licensing.html

"The Cygwin API library found in the winsup subdirectory of the source code is also covered by the GNU GPL (with exceptions; see below). By default, all executables link against this library (and in the process include GPL'd Cygwin glue code). This means that unless you modify the tools so that compiled executables do not make use of the Cygwin library, your compiled programs will also have to be free software distributed under the GPL with source code available to all."

(emphasis mine)

Re:How does this differ...

[benjamindees]

any DERIVED WORKS of GPLed software must also be GPLed.

This is stupid. A derived work of a font is the font itself. It's already well established that the output of running a program can't be considered a "derived work". I believe this concept stems from something called "fair use". The "use" of a font is in creating documents. It has no other use.

What about proprietary fonts and their licenses? Are my documents now property of Adobe and Microsoft because I use their fonts and hence my writings are considered derived works?

Not to mention any document you write can be considered a work in and of itself. It can be displayed with any font. This entire story is stupid.

Re:How does this differ...

[mbaciarello]

I can use GCC to compile non-GPL code, I can use GIMP to create non-GPL (or CC, in this case?) artwork, and I can use OO to produce non-GFDL documents.

Indeed, but no parts of GCC, GIMP or OO would be included in those documents.

On the other hand, when you write a document in a font and then distribute it in the form of an image or printed copy, you are giving away copies of those fonts: the A's, B's, C's...

Granted, people receiving the document will not be necessarily be able to use it, so it's not like distributing source code. It's more like embedding GPL'ed, compiled libraries within a larger application.

Re:How does this differ...

[pla]

having a font used in a document would mean the document was legally a derivative of the font.

I'd continue this discussion but, as I have my browser set to use Arial as the proportional font, I would need permission from Microsoft to create such a derivative work from their font. ;-)

Re:How does this differ...

[mark-t]

The GIMP is GPL'd. Yet artwork created with it is not obligated to be covered by the GPL.

The reason for this is simple.

If that requirement were there, GIMP would not be nearly as widely used.

If people realized that using a GPL'd font required them to GPL their document, similarly, people would simply choose an alternative font to use instead, which is counterproductive to the reason why the font was created in the first place.

Re:How does this differ...

[ninjaz]

First of all, if you haven't changed the font itself, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

You must be thinking of LGPL, which allows use in non-free works and only sharing modifications to the LGPL'd work itself.

Second, if you only use it for within an organization, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

There are times when two organizations share information with each other under NDA. The GPL states that you must not place any further restrictions on the recipient of work than those the GPL places itself. So, in this context, it would be a GPL violation because the NDA attempts to prevent unlimited distribution.

Third, the license under which a given tool falls does not usually extend to what it creates - I can use GCC to compile non-GPL code, I can use GIMP to create non-GPL (or CC, in this case?) artwork, and I can use OO to produce non-GFDL documents.

According to the FSF, the reason the tool's license doesn't normally extend to what it creates is that the tool normally doesn't include parts of itself in the output. In cases where it does (eg., gcc and bison) there are explicit exceptions allowing the use of those portions in non-free programs. See here: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html #GPLOutput

So why would any of the above magically differ for a font?

That's exactly the problem. The position of the FSF is that shared libraries are derivative works, so non-free programs are not allowed to link to GPL'd libraries. Why would that principle apply to shared libraries and not to fonts?

I'm not a laywer, and there may be a case for fair use, but as the FSF website states, notions of fair use differ by jurisdiction. The fact that the FSF has come up with the experimental font exception to the GPL should be a tip-off, too.

Re:How does this differ...

[dr.badass]

Under today's ridiculous copyright interpretation I can very much believe that having a font used in a document would mean the document was legally a derivative of the font.

This might be a fair criticism, if not for the fact that, in the United States, typefaces cannot be copyrighted at all.

The font is a part of the finished document in a way the gimp isn't a part of a picture and gcc isn't a part of the code it makes.

The issue is of fonts embedded in the document. It's just like including any other GPLed code, except in in this case, the code is the typefaces' bytecode.

Re:How does this differ...

[angel'o'sphere]

You're distributing a copy of the font inside the document.


This is not necessaryly true. Usually the document only would reference the fonts. It is a manual work needed to include them.


So if you [for instance] have whitepapers on your website you're distributing the font. That means you have to give the source to whatever you made with it away as well. Of course since you intend to give the document out anyways this has no bearing.

The source of what? The source of the font you distribute, yes.
And more? No.
You document is not derived from the font. If you exchange the font the documents content is the same.
Note: "derived work" is a legal term. It has a special meaning. A document is not a derived work from the font it containes or does not contain.

Suppose you only distribute it printed anyway:
Who dares to claim a printed book is a derived work of the font it is printed in? And as the font was "free to use" unlike Adobes or some other "font manufactors" font the author of the GPL font has no right to interfer with the book writers distribution.

angel'o'sphere

Re:How does this differ...

[mindstrm]

Because the fonts are part of the final work, not just used to generate it.

The excemption from distributing source for unchanged binaries only applies in a non-commercial setting, the language is specific about this.

You are correct that the output of GPL programs does not fall under the GPL, however, with fonts, we are talking about distributing the essay with the fonts, making it a derived work. You don't distribute GCC along with your code.

This is all silly though, the main point is the GPL wasn't intended for fonts or other graphic items.. it was meant for program source code. To use it in another field is to invite trouble.

Re:How does this differ...

[blakestah]

The more salient point is that all of this PRESUMES the document can be considered a derived work , in the copyright sense, of the font. If the document cannot be considered a derived work, the GPL status of the font is irrelevant.

Personally I would be hard pressed to think that in general a document would be considered a derived work of the font...

Re:How does this differ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So exactly how many GPL fonts can dance on the head of a pin?

Re:How does this differ...

[joker784]

The impact is that if your document comes under GPL because of the imbedded font, then someone else can freely distribute your document and make changes to it and there is nothing you can do about it. I think most authors would like to keep ownership of the documents they make...

Re:How does this differ...

[Anonymous Coward]

PURE

FUCKING

EVIL

This must be why lawyers get paid so much...

[netcrusher88]

Wow, I wish I knew how to translate legalese.

Re:This must be why lawyers get paid so much...

[spectre_240sx]

It's easy. About 90% of it translates roughly to "Please bend over."

GNU Privacy Guard

[Shimmer]

So if I encrypt using GPG, does that mean all my e-mails are covered by the GPL? Yikes.

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[Anonymous Coward]

GPG doesn't include a copy of itself inside your emails. Embedded fonts do.

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[cheesybagel]

The copyright license of a program does not extend to the data you produce with it AFAIK. See the Electronic Arts Paint program case for more info on this. Their license used to imply that any art you created with it was theirs, and it was shot down. It is nice that the license clarifies this though.

Sorry, but I got no case reference, I got it from Wikipedia here.

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[bcmm]

OMFG! You would have to give the email's SOURCE CODE to the recipient along with the binary! That SUCKS!
Oh wait...

You already did, and there was no binary!

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[strider44]

You obviously have to give the source code (the original email) along with the encrypted binary.

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[Al Dimond]

I'd assume GPG to be a similar case as GCC, the encrypted jumble made from your plaintext message the analog to a binary program compiled from source.

I don't think that programs you compile with GCC are necessarily GPL'd, unless of course you just happen to link against GPL'd libraries.

But then again, I might be wrong.

Re:GNU Privacy Guard

[bcmm]

Um, isn't that like saying you need to include the uncompressed files with all tar.gz files you distribute?

If anyone tries to enforce this

[duncan]

They would be more of an idiot than SCO and MS combined.

And I don't say this as a troll.

Re:If anyone tries to enforce this

[marcosdumay]

Anyway, there is a need to remove the doubt from the license. Every possibility of court process can be used as FUD against FOSS.

No

[bkhl]

There are a lot of consequences here, such as internal corporate communications.

No, whatever effects this may have, it still wont affect what you use the stuff for internally.

but the font is not in the document

[Anonymous Coward]

if i write file.txt using a gpl font, then how is file.txt gpled, it does not contain any trace of the font.

not many formats embed the fonts. and if they did they you would be SOL if you were using a proprietary font that could not be redisributed.

Re:but the font is not in the document

[Dink Paisy]

The most popular formats that embed font information are pdf and ps. You are SOL if you use a proprietary font that can not be redistributed, but most (not all, though) proprietary fonts permit redistribution in that form. I do check the licenses of proprietary fonts that I get. I have some that do not permit commercial use, but all of the font I have permit me to redistribute them embedded into a document, and permit others to display, print, and redistribute that document.

XML

[Uber Banker]

A little off-the-wall here:

If a document's contents were in a file which mapped to a style sheet, a la HTML and CSS, or perhaps the more general purpose XML, then the contents (HTML) could be GPL conditions free, but the overall presentation would be subject to it.

Why not...

[bmac83]

Why not use the Lesser GPL (LGPL) for fonts? Wouldn't that solve the problem?

Re:Why not...

[m50d]

Absolutely. I'm surprised these are seen as "unintended consequences", since wanting this is the only reason I can think of for having your fonts GPLed.

Re:Why not...

[Nimrangul]

Or even better, since it's just a damned font anyways, put it under the god damned public domain so anyone can use it without restrictions.

I mean, come on, it's a damned font.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

or.. if they don't want it to be public domain, I believe there are a number of artistic licenses out there other fonts have used.... along the lines of "Don't sell this font or claim it as your own."

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not put ALL fonts in the public domain? Who wants to buy a font anyway? It's just a font!

Re:Why not...

[vt0asta]

Or even better, since it's just a damned font anyways, put it under the god damned public domain so anyone can use it without restrictions.

I mean, come on, it's a damned font.

Why do you hate America?

Re:Why not...

[notthe9]

Without font competition, we are not apt to see new fonts at the rate we currently do. I mean, my grandma will have to use the same fonts again and again for commenting her forwards!

Re:Why not...

[shufler]

Well, one could make the argument that they toiled endlessly to get the kerning just right.

Re:Why not...

[oddfox]

Perhaps you are correct, but there is the old saying of "Necessity is the mother of invention." I hear making fonts is pretty hard, though. :)

Re:Why not...

[Holi]

Then sell them, but the parent is right, GPL does not really make sense for fonts. Make them free or not but don't make me worry that the font I used may affect the rights I have to the work I produced.

Re:Why not...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

put it under the god damned public domain

Holden Caulfield? Is that you?

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you like it if someone told you that something that you created had no value?

Fontographers take months to years to create one single excellent font. It's a hard, tedious process.

How would you like to use Times New Roman on your wedding invitation?

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

I mean, come on, it's a damned font.

Perhaps you're not aware that type design is a pretty big business, and that good fonts are an exceptionally valuable product to those who are able to craft them.

There's also the curious case that typefaces can't be copyrighted in the US. They are considered "property", but not "intellectual property", or something to that effect, while the names can be trademarked. So, they can be copied ("Arial" is basically a copy of "Helvetica", for instance), but not duplicated (you can't call your Helvetica-clone face "Helvetica").

It's all very weird and it doesn't surprise me that there are strange legal possibilites cropping up. Type property rights have been argued over for as long as there has been type.

Re:Why not...

[Doctor_Jest]

Simple solution: Make the font GPL, but if you use it in documentation, it's not subject to GPL, only if the font's used in a program like Scribus, Word, Open Office, and so forth.

That way the font can be used by anyone to make a proprietary document, but if you intend to use the font for your program, you have to abide by the GPL.

Thus, end users are exempted from putting their documents under the GPL (that just sounds dang odd... my words are now GPLed because of the font I used?) I don't recall Microsoft owning my documents because I used their Wingdings font. (file formats are another matter, however indirect they may be...)

I could be wrong, but I'm sure that would've popped up by now.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

So why not copy Helvetica call it HA-1 and put it in the public domain?

I have to agree, the largest failing of Linux (and Java for that matter) is a good set of fonts. Why not make a bunch of truely Public Domain fonts so everyone can use them?

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're at it, maybe you can also convince these people to put their damned fonts in the public domain?

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why not make a bunch of truely Public Domain fonts so everyone can use them?

Why don't you go ahead and to just that? Answer: because making good fonts is hard.

Re:Why not...

[StuffJustHappens]

All your (upper and lower) case are belong to us!?

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the ghostscript guys.. all their fonts are GPL'd

Re:Why not...

[(negative video)]

There's also the curious case that typefaces can't be copyrighted in the US.

Whilst the typeface itself cannot be copyrighted, an original and creative set of detailed geometric instructions for how to draw the typeface can be. (At least according to my readings.) That inlcudes a Postscript program to draw a character, a list of line segments and splines, a bitmap, etc.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

The word is "anyway", you damned hick!

Re:Why not...

[Nimrangul]

I could care less about people wanting to make money off fonts; if you are putting it out there for people to use, why restrict them at all, just put them out there for people to use.

If you want people to pay for it then fine, sell it, it won't confront me at all if you do. I was only talking about jackasses that are putting terms to their fonts' usages.

Re:Why not...

[DarkSarin]

I am not a weapon of mass distruction...

Honest.

Now that Sarin IV guy, he might be.

(for the humor impaired--look at his sig, look at my name, look up Sarin IV)

Re:Why not...

[bigpat]

There's also the curious case that typefaces can't be copyrighted in the US. They are considered "property", but not "intellectual property", or something to that effect, while the names can be trademarked. So, they can be copied ("Arial" is basically a copy of "Helvetica", for instance), but not duplicated (you can't call your Helvetica-clone face "Helvetica").

If the font can't be copyrighted, but only the font name can be copyrighted, then how would using a GPL'd font cause a problem again? Something is a miss here. Is this just Sunday evenning foolery?

Re:Why not...

[Lally Singh]

Sure, if you want to prevent any commercial app from ever being on the Linux desktop! Remember that the base fonts for a platform are provided by the OS vendor, commercial app vendors don't want to deal with this stuff.

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

If the font can't be copyrighted, but only the font name can be copyrighted, then how would using a GPL'd font cause a problem again? Something is a miss here. Is this just Sunday evenning foolery?

The true issue was poorly represented by the post (blah blah Slashdot "editors" blah blah). It was about embedding fonts in a document. Since digital typefaces are bytecode, it seems very clear that embedding them in a larger work would work exactly as embedding any other GPL code into a larger work. A few replies after the linked message is a much more enlightening one.

The other point of confusion I see is the difference between copyright and licensing, which type's unique status makes it hard to explain. To clarify what I said in the last post about copying/duplicating : you can copy in the analog sense -- you make make your face look like theirs, but you can't copy in the digital sense of making it exactly the same. As I said before, it's all very weird.

I think what this all points to (and the above link seems to agree) is that the GPL probably isn't a good idea for typefaces, at least not in it's current form. It wasn't really written with them in mind, and confusion like this is the result.

I may be leaving something out re: type copyrights, as I am only a dilletante typophile, and don't have a professional understanding of the subject.

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

I have to agree, the largest failing of Linux (and Java for that matter) is a good set of fonts. Why not make a bunch of truely Public Domain fonts so everyone can use them?

There are plenty of public domain faces out on the web, but they're mostly of the novelty variety, and aren't really terribly relevant. Excepting them, here is why this hasn't happened yet:

1) Good type design is pretty hard.
2) Good type design for all-purpose screen fonts is really hard.
3) Tools are either expensive or crap.
4) Good type designers cost money.
5) There just isn't much incentive.
6) Open source community attitude toward design issues generally sucks.

It's a good idea, but the people to convince are professional type designers and foundries. Bitstream Vera is a (the only?) example I can think of like this, though it's merely under "generous copyright".

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

Simple solution: Make the font GPL, but if you use it in documentation, it's not subject to GPL, only if the font's used in a program like Scribus, Word, Open Office, and so forth.

That's basically what the "experimental exception" bit was about. Though to clarify the issue (muddied by the inaccurate Slashdot post) -- the problem was over embedding a font in a document. In that case, you're including code (typefaces are bytecode) in a larger work, which the GPL is pretty clear about.

The real conclusion is that the GPL isn't such a good idea for typefaces. For what it's worth, it doesn't even sound like there are any.

I don't recall Microsoft owning my documents because I used their Wingdings font.

You're confusing several different issues.
First, Microsoft wouldn't "own" your documents like this because Wingdings isn't under the GPL.

However, Wingdings is still subject to the license that Microsoft granted you to use it. You can't (under that license) copy it to another computer that doesn't have it. If you embed it in a Word document, and sent it to another computer, that computer will be able to display it, but not use it in other documents, unless it already has it.

Second, "owning" isn't even right in reference to the GPL -- the issue is whether the GPL of the embedded font "infects" your document, making it GPL. Even then, it's your copyrighted document, and you are free to re-license it as you please. You just can't legally license it as anything but GPL as long as you have that embeded GPL typeface.

Again, the only real conclusion here is that the GPL isn't really a good way to license fonts. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

Re:Why not...

[kasperd]

Remember that the base fonts for a platform are provided by the OS vendor, commercial app vendors don't want to deal with this stuff.

This just means the font and application are not linked, and thus the application is not subject to the font license. Even those (sometimes very weird) attempts of calling it a derivated work doesn't apply. The application does not have to be used with any specific font. The application just talks X11, and the X server provides the fonts (which it may get from a font server). In fact the X server can be on a different machine with no GPL software at all.

Re:Why not...

[grahamm]

Are you sure that fonts are code? I would have thought that the font rendering engine is the code and the representation of each character within the font is data.

Re:Why not...

[Pieroxy]

I am sorry, but all this sounds utterly stupid. And if your document becomes GPL, so what? All people you give it to must have access to... the source code? But you're distributing them the doc, which is its own source code...

I don't see anything worth any trouble here...

Re:Why not...

[corvair2k1]

As a recipient of said document, you're free to redistribute it to whomever you please.

Re:Why not...

[Decaff]

I have to agree, the largest failing of Linux (and Java for that matter) is a good set of fonts.

Set the JAVA_FONTS environment variable and your Java app can pick up and use any fonts on your system, no matter what OS you are on. There is no limit to what fonts you can use.

Re:Why not...

[KiloByte]

I guess you'll want to take a look at Antykwa Poltawskiego. It's a font that looks better than Bitstream Vera Serif on the FreeType renderer.

And the license is... GPL. Hmm, do we have any articles about GPLed fonts nearby?

My edits and repackaging can be found here -- don't use the original version unless you're using it on Windows. The original version looks good only on paper -- it sucks on Windows and on FreeType without "forced autohinter", my one looks good on FreeType but really, really blows on Win32.
(typing this on a Windows machine :p -- thus, I've attached no screenshots on the webpage)

Re:Why not...

[Fred_A]

In the same way that a Python program is data and the python runtime engine is the code ?

Re:Why not...

[2old2rockNroll]

How would you like to use Times New Roman on your wedding invitation?

That's probably not a very worrisome question on Slashdot.

Re:Why not...

[slavemowgli]

If fonts are not intellectual property, though, then how can a font be GPL'ed? Or, for that matter, how can commercial font makers prevent others from distributing their fonts for free (possibly with a new name)?

Re:Why not...

[Suidae]

3) Tools are either expensive or crap.

And that 'or' there isn't exclusive. I looked around a bit a few years ago for a good TrueType (or similar) font designer package, and while my search wasn't exaustive, about the only 'good' package I could find was Fontographer, and its an expensive, unmaintained package. Functional, yes, but its feels like it hasn't been updated in many years.

Whats the 'cutting edge' in font development?

Re:Why not...

[bentcd]

There may be a difference between "typeface" and "font". Fonts (in this context) tend to contain computer code, which perhaps _can_ be copyrighted. Not that I would know.
There certainly _is_ a difference between copyright and trademark though and it is no surprise that font names can be trademarked - most things can be trademarked if you're a bit careful how your mark looks.

Re:Why not...

[Nimrangul]

Honestly, I find some of his views to be correct, but I am a socialist, so that only makes sense.

I very much dislike corporate America, which has too many overly powerful companies controlling the lives of the people.

The goal of a corporation should not be to make as much profit as possible, but rather to better the surrounding region while making a profit. America is far to centred in the persuit of the biggest/newest/fastest, they're stuck in a pattern that does not help anyone but themselves; hardly a Christian way to do things.

But then I am also a cynical aethist besides being a socialist, so of course I am not a popular person when talking politics.

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

Are you sure that fonts are code? I would have thought that the font rendering engine is the code and the representation of each character within the font is data.

The confusion stems from the fact that fonts contain both outline shapes and glyph instructions that programmatically modify those shapes. The shapes could easily be argued are just data, but the instructions operate like any other interpreted language. (OpenType/TrueType might even be Turing-complete. I know for sure that PostScript and TeX are.)

I can also see rejecting the idea of a document being code -- but say you've got an HTML document with PHP embedded in it, to be interpreted. Nobody is arguing that the output, the interpreted and rendered page, is code. But it seems like the instructions and markup that generate that document can be considered code.

If it's still confusing, blame Von Neumann. Code and data are basically indistinguishable.

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

If fonts are not intellectual property, though, then how can a font be GPL'ed? Or, for that matter, how can commercial font makers prevent others from distributing their fonts for free (possibly with a new name)?

When you buy a typeface, say from Adobe, there are terms and conditions to the purchase that you have to agree to. These include not copying them, etc. It's a contractual agreement, not copyright. As I said before, they can be considered property, but not intellectual property. With IP, your right to license it stems from your holding the copyright. With real property, your right to license it stems from your posession of it.

Basically, they don't hand it over unless you agree not to share it. They can't, apparently, go after people that acquired them "in the wild", which is why you don't have the "TIAA" busting down doors to go after "type pirates".

(Again, I'm not 100% certain about much of this. Most of my awareness of the subject comes from osmosis.)

Re:Why not...

[jonbryce]

The code that renders the font on paper and on the screen is copyrighted, and can be licenced under the GPL.

We are not talking about the shapes of the letters here, but things like the hinting code to tell the computer what to do in a low resolution environment.

Re:Why not...

[Doctor_Jest]

By "own" I meant Microsoft dictating what license you can apply to the document. They have standard license stuff, I'm sure, but nothing that says _what_ you write in Word belongs to, is subject to, any other license than what you put on it yourself. The distinction is how to handle the difference between the document "format" and the content of the document. Since both are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the kneejerk initial interpretation is "the words are now GPLed until you ditch the font."

The fact that this can be interpreted as possible under the GPL with GPL'ed fonts is somewhat disturbing. Clarification is in order, to be sure. The original post from the Scribus mailing list wasn't all that clear either.

If you can re-license it any way you please, as long as it's GPL, that's not really any way you please, is it? It saddles you with a certain obligation that documents should never have. End documents that embed fonts aren't the same as, to my way of looking at it, code. It's just not the same conceptual model in my head.

This sounds kinda like Henry Ford saying "you can buy the Ford in any color you want, as long as it's black."

The words can still be used without the font, and the meaning, value, or level of protection needed do not change as a result of removing the font (other than how the document looks), how can the GPL "infect" the content of the document? I am confusing myself just thinking about it all. :)

IOW, the font is not dictating the content of the message. The font is merely the display of the message. Having that dictate the license is confusing...

Re:Why not...

[dr.badass]

What I've realized in the past 24 hours is that this panic is caused by the same flawed understanding of type that caused Congress to explicity deny typefaces copyright protection.

The theory was that if typefaces were copyrightable, then the type designer could wield those rights over any user of the face. Somehow this was construed to mean that a newspaper could be forced to censor itself if the type's creator didn't like what they printed with his typeface. So instead of clarifying the law to excempt such theoretical (but not realistic) possibilities, they excluded typefaces from copyright alltogether.

So instead, they are treated more like real property, dispite resembling in every way intellectual property. Whereas you can own a book without owning the story it contains, owning a font is like owning a hammer.

In practice, companies that sell fonts require license agreements that prohibit you from copying them and so forth. However, this is not the same as copyright. It's an agreement between two parties, not a right afforded to you by the government.

So, the hammer salesman requires you to agree not to share your hammer before he'll sell it to you.

The words can still be used without the font, and the meaning, value, or level of protection needed do not change as a result of removing the font (other than how the document looks), how can the GPL "infect" the content of the document?

It doesn't infect the content in that way. Once you remove the font, you can do anything you want with your copyrighted text. However, if you had released it previously under the GPL, then that version continues to be GPLed.

I'll say again the only really conclusive point in this whole story: the GPL is not suitable for fonts.

Re:Why not...

[Doctor_Jest]

It wasn't me who brought this up the first time, so I'll reiterate what the poster in the scribus mailing list said:

"True. Also, it is note worthy to point out that using gpl licensed fonts in a document makes the document a derived work of the font and therefore, subject to the gpl."

Perhaps we need a definition of "document"? The format of the document? The layout codes and so forth? That I'd buy. The content? That is a tough sell.

The question remains, can the GPL be interpreted as such? I realize it is not suitable for fonts if this is the case, however, no one has made any clear distinction between what was said and what was interpreted in the mailing list.

First, the salesman of the hammer does not require you to submit to not reselling, abusing, or loaning the hammer to whom you see fit. You sign no license agreement with the hammer maker or seller to use the hammer in any way, subject to any method the hammer is used for. Want to drive screws in with your hammer? Home Depot is not going to sue you for violating the hammer's license. If the GPL font owner requires derivative works to be GPL also, the font is not like a hammer in any way. It is more like a library used to build a program, which the font is not.

However, what your analogy is showing (and I am only going on the scribus mailing list) is that if you use the GPLed hammer in your house, that you now must license your house as a derived work of the hammer. Now, someone is either mistaking the intent of the GPL, or it's all a lot of hot air.

The assumption here is, as you said "once you remove the font you can do what you want with your copyrighted text." That cannot be the case, even with embedded fonts, because the font was not used in creation of the work itself and the work itself can exist without the font. Therefore it was not used in the creation of the document as would be required to GPL it.

My point is, you should be able to do what you want with it _with_ the font in the document. The true meaning of a font is like a real hammer. It is used to build the document, but you can use your fist or a shoe if you have to, the house will not look as pretty, but it will still be a house. Once you've built the house, the hammer is no longer required, regardless of how it was used. Even if you keep it in the garage once you're done.

The only really conclusive point to this story is how the GPL is being interpreted. And it is showing how people can fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of the content. If that is the case, it needs to be clarified rather than argued over in forums.

Otherwise, confusion will still reign. Regardless of how "misunderstood" the whole font or typeface issue is. Simply put, we're still at square one until someone clarifies the GPL or proclaims that the GPL cannot be used for fonts.

BTW, I'm not panicked. I'm just curious.

Re:Why not...

[Doctor_Jest]

I didn't mention it before (it's late.. heh) but I appreciate your insights in the discussion. You've been able to wade through the hype and hyperbole, and that is always a good thing(TM). :)

Re:Why not...

[mink]

Because for years I thought "Horse with no Name" was a Neil Young song.

Re:Why not...

[codergeek42]

I take it you've not used the Bitstream Vera fonts then?

I hate being a perfect test case.

[captnitro]

So somebody clear this up for me. I'm a graphic designer, and in the past have enjoyed the Bitstream Vera line of GPL fonts, though usually I find them too 'plain' to use in much design at all.

Theoretically, do I need to be distributing the my Fireworks/PS files themselves or just the fonts? Obviously I'm a bit confused as to how this works, and hadn't considered that the GPL would apply to my "documents", many of which I've sold.

Back to Frutiger.

Re:I hate being a perfect test case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, you aren't a test case, perfect or otherwise.

Bitstream Vera is not subject to the GPL.

Re:I hate being a perfect test case.

[Triffid_Hunter]

IANAL, but this is how I see your position:

I'd say that those who release fonts under the gpl would only be annoyed if you re-released the same font or one you created by changing their work under a different name and non-gpl licence <i>as a font</i> rather than a graphic design, but that in itself won't save you in court if its not true.

you're distributing a work containing (linking) the binary result (rasterised fonts) of a GPLed "program" (the font generating datafile/code), thus you should ensure that the fonts are available to those who recieve the binary result (they're freely available online)

thus you shouldn't have a problem unless you modify the font's original datafile - which would be creating a deriviative work of the font, and even then you'd only have to provide that deriviative to people you send your binary result to...

other posters have stated that a font in itself is not copyrightable in the US, but its name may be, so if that is true you're still in the clear anyway...

you'd only have a problem if someone considers your design a deriviative work of the font, in which case you'd just have to send the project file in your designer's native format or at least one that allows full editing possibility if you send the binary result which afaik you'd do anyway since printing houses prefer vector graphics over raster...

some other posts note that the GPL faq says that fonts' licences should add a clause that excludes works using the font from having to be GPLed, similar to the clause in GCC's license that excludes the binary output of GCC from being GPLed, so you might wish to check that for the simplest clarification of your position.

HTH

Re:I hate being a perfect test case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. I thought BSV was GPL, but either way, it was the only one I could remember. :) --captnitro

The GPL is written to protect programs...

[Husgaard]

...not other content like fonts.

This is just another example of why using the GPL for content other than programs is a bad idea.

Re:The GPL is written to protect programs...

[m50d]

Especially when there's the perfectly good design science license tucked away on the FSF website for when you want a gpl-like license for non-programs.

flame bait thread

[Anonymous Coward]

pointless flame bait thread. using a font in a document doesen't make the document gpl (whatever that would mean since documents aren't software anyway).

"As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version."

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.ht ml #FontException

Fine, i'll bite

[kingkade]

Why do you think that the BSD license (or no you mean software realeased under it) has been outpaced by its GPL counterparts?

Besides, the GPL isn't really free in a sense because it restricts you to "give", which is an admirable sentiment, but nevertheless forced upon the licensee -- sometimes in unexpected ways as with Scribus. I'd argue that this is certainly a type of restriction, making it less "Free".

Re:Fine, i'll bite

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"the GPL isn't really free in a sense because it restricts you to" remaining free.

"I'd argue that this is certainly a type of restriction, making it less 'Free'. "

This is the difference between inalienable rights, and rights you can agree to give up.

It is like you are arguing that making slavery illegal makes us less free, because we no longer have the "right" to become slaves. Thus, in order to be free, we have to have slavery. Reduce the limitations on our freedoms! Bring back slavery! At least allow me the right to choose to become a slave!

Feild Day

[PktLoss]

Anti Open-Source groups are going to have a feild day with this one. Time to batten down the hatches.

I doubt this would hold up anyway

[MrLint]

Assuming there wasnt an exception, I very much doubt this would hold up. As a document itself is the content, and the font is a visualization tool, the font doesn't change the content. It is part of the display of said document.

It is somewhat analogous to saying GIMP to make an image, the image does not become part of the GPL.

Also with a font, a document is not typically intended to be a font distribution method. Fonts are almost always distributed as stand alone objects to be installed in your system. No one installs a document into their system to get a font. No reasonable person uses documents in that fashion. And courts generally err on what a reasonable person would expect. So even if the GPL fonts were designed *on purpose* to force GPL of other people's document content it would likely be ruled invalid. And invalid clauses of contracts are non-binding.

Of course such a taking was not something intended, or even wanted.

Re:I doubt this would hold up anyway

[TERdON]

No reasonable person uses documents in that fashion.

We are on Slashdot, aren't we? Reasonable persons SHOULD be underrepresentated here...

All you probably have to do is google for a howto. Or get the pdf file documentation from Adobe...

Wrong

[Webmonger]

While I think you understand the spirit of the GPL, the facts are a little different.

First of all, if you haven't changed the font itself, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

In fact, anyone who distributes GPL software in binary form is obligated to distribute the source, whether or not they've made modifications to the source.

Second, if you only use it for within an organization, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.

This all depends what 'distribution' means, but if you distribute GPLed software in binary form, you are obligated to provide the source code to anyone who you distributed the binary to. This would presumably apply within an organization.

Re:Wrong

[kenthorvath]

In fact, anyone who distributes GPL software in binary form is obligated to distribute the source, whether or not they've made modifications to the source.

I thought that the requirement was only to make the source available, not to distribute it. That could be accomplished with so much as a link to the official website, no?

Re:Wrong

[Noksagt]

This all depends what 'distribution' means, but if you distribute GPLed software in binary form, you are obligated to provide the source code to anyone who you distributed the binary to. This would presumably apply within an organization.

It is widely agreed that internal-use doesn't trigger the distribution requirements.

Re:Wrong

[GoofyBoy]

>I thought that the requirement was only to make the source available, not to distribute it.

Making the source/document availiable is the issue here. Suppose it was an internal private document? How would you feel if your corporation could potentially/possiblily/outside chance in hell be legally forced to make public all of its documentation (bill payments, invoices, contracts, internal memos)?

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if your corporation could potentially/possiblily/outside chance in hell be legally forced to make public all of its documentation (bill payments, invoices, contracts, internal memos)?

That's not how the GPL works. If you inadvertently incorporate GPLed code in your work, that automatically make your work GPLed. Eben Moglen has been working hard to dispel this myth.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that the requirement was only to make the source available, not to distribute it. That could be accomplished with so much as a link to the official website, no?

No. You can't guarantee that the official website will always be available, or that it will always have the right version on it. You must set things up in such a way that if you were hit by a truck and ended up in hospital for a month, and the official website vanished from the net in the meantime, people who downloaded the binaries from you could also get the source with them.

That means that if the binaries are a download on your site, the source must be too.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If you inadvertently incorporate GPLed code in your work, that automatically make your work GPLed.

I think you missed a "does not" between "that" and "automatically". Your work does not become GPLed, you just infringe on the copyright of the GPLed code every time you distribute your work under any other license.

Re:Wrong

[Webmonger]

It may be widely agreed, but I'm not sure I agree with it. If I wrote a book, and found out that an organization was photocopying it using it as a training manual for their employees, I would be hopping mad. You're saying copying computer programs is different. But what makes them different?

Re:Wrong

[Noksagt]

In this case? The fact that the organization which wrote the GPL says so

Clarifying vs. Changing vs. Lawyer Paranoia

[billstewart]

The font exception wording does clarify that using the fonts doesn't mean that all your text are belong to us. I don't see that meaningfully saying that without the exception, that you've got legal problems, though it may be useful to calm down some lawyers, especially armchair lawyers or lawyers who are already paranoid about contaminating their intellectual property.

In some cases, a font is a program, especially in Postscript; in other cases, it's a set of bitmaps or curves or equations. Using a GPLed font *could* require that if you're including the binaries of the font in a document you give somebody, you might be required to tell them where to get source code for the font (if the font is the kind of program where there's a meaningful difference between the source and the binary, which isn't usually the case for Postscript fonts.) At worst, some people could argue that it could require that if you've printed a document using the GPL'd font, that you provide information on how to get the font program, but that's somewhat like saying that if you use a GPL'd version of printf, then anything you print out needs to include a GPL notice and information on where to get the source code.

So calm down. This isn't a case of GNU/RMS being expansively greedy for ownership of everything everybody writes or prints. On the other hand, if you do modify GPL'd fonts, then GPL coverage of the modified versions is a perfectly reasonably thing.

Re:Clarifying vs. Changing vs. Lawyer Paranoia

[potentiallyprofound]

By printing a document, you're not releasing the font in any way - aside from someone 'reverse engineering' the font from the document (i.e. tracing/scanning/etc), there is no way they have the font itself. What you're distributing is the results of *you* using the font, not the ability for others to use it.

Re:Clarifying vs. Changing vs. Lawyer Paranoia

[m50d]

Yeah, but it includes the font. It's like distributing a statically linked program - you still have to follow the license of the library you linked in.

Re:Clarifying vs. Changing vs. Lawyer Paranoia

[potentiallyprofound]

Maybe I'm not reading this right, but the printed document doesn't 'include' the font any more than a painting 'includes' the subject matter of the painting. ...actually, reading that, I think I see what you mean. It's like distributing a photograph of a copyrighted object/design - legally, you don't own the copyright, etc. I suppose that would extend further into music and others as well. Okay, that makes sense. What *doesn't* make sense, however, is someone GPL'ing their fonts.

Re:Clarifying vs. Changing vs. Lawyer Paranoia

[m50d]

Someone could GPL their font exactly because they want to make documents using it gpled. To me it doesn't seem a good idea for the same reason gpling glibc doesn't make sense - there are plenty of fonts around, and it would just mean people don't use it - but I can see someone wanting to do it.

Just the FONT not the DOCUMENT !!

[ElDuderino44137]

Give me a break ...

The document wouldn't become GPL'ed.
Only further modification to the font would be GPL'ed!!

If the reverse were true ...
No organization anywhere would use any GPL software ...
For fear that their business would becom GPL'ed.

Who posted this trash anyway?
It's not April 1st,
-- The Dude

A tip to avoid these problems

[dtfinch]

Source code licenses are meant for licensing source code.

No no no.

[BillsPetMonkey]

The font is defined as "the Program" in the GPL - therefore if you modify the font your work is subject to GPL. The document is not.

If I use a GPL program to assist creation of a website, that website is not then subject to GPL.

This story is addressing a non-issue

Re:No no no.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL, Linux and Apple are bad and anything Microsoft/the RIAA does is just the acts of a responsible company/organisation . Welcome to New Slashdot. It is not your father's Slashdot. Be grateful they stopped short of bringing in Spider-man and Wolverine.

Does this have application to the DoD?

[sielwolf]

If a presentation is GPL due to GPL fonts, does this provide a barrier to use by the DoD or DoJ or any government agency that would like to use the cheap OSS solution but wouldn't risk compromising classified material with potential copyright? On one hand you could say "we'll that's win win!" but couldn't that stop agencies from implementing any OSS solution because they could get sued to see all the material they make/view/keep with it?

Re:What is GPL'd? The font or the text?

[m50d]

The whole work may be legally a derivative - it's including the font as an integral part of itself. If it is, it has to be gpled.

And you say GPL isnt viral-Patients dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Please quit spreading FUD. The only thing that this shows is that application of the GPL to non-software has some issues. Ever wonder why the GNU Free Documentation License was written? Granted, BSD-type licenses lend themselves to be applicable to a wider range of content, but that is just incidental, it was not designed into the license."

If you remember that licenses are a reflection of goals. Then yes it was? It's just that the BSD licenses doesn't have so many "side-effects" that need to be worked around. eg. web services, fonts. When we say freedom, we mean exactly that. Not "freedom" with a clause.

ok, I haven't looked at the Scribus format...

[Malor]

I haven't looked at the Scribus format, but very few programs encapsulate the actual font data inside a document. In essence, most word processors include pointers to a given font, but if you don't have the font on your system, it doesn't magically just show up. Instead, you get a replacement font mapping.

In other words, I'm just saying "I thought this document would work best with font X", which would in no way create a GPL obligation. PDFs do, however, include actual font data, so you could presumably be creating a GPL obligation by publishing one.

But remember, unless you EXPLICITLY license a copyright you hold as releasable under the GPL, simply including other GPLed work with it DOES NOT make you lose the rights to your code. You are violating the copyright on the GPLed section, and you may be liable for damages for doing so, but it's not like you magically lose control over the code you wrote yourself.

When you combine your own output with GPLed ouput, the resulting program, in essence, has at least two owners... you, and the person or people who wrote the GPLed section. You can't lose ownership of your code by combining it with GPLed code. You still own the part you created.

Likewise, you can't lose ownership of your document by publishing it with GPL fonts. Even if the GPL is found to be applicable here, about the worst that could happen would be a forced rerelease with a different font. You will never lose control of the actual document information. And the chance of a copyright-infringement lawsuit is nearly zero. In this scenario, it's not clearly obvious that a violation occurred, and the actual damages are most likely zero, since GPLed fonts are usually free-as-in-beer. About the worst that's likely to happen is a nasty letter from some zealot somewhere in the OSS community.

I think I can safely risk that.

Re:ok, I haven't looked at the Scribus format...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesnt, apart from the names, however this applies to all document formats from all Postscript or PDF creators etc...

What about Microsoft fonts?

[TorKlingberg]

Does this mean that Windows users need a special permit to make documents with the Windows fonts? Or does Microsoft specifically allow using the fonts in their license?

Re:What about Microsoft fonts?

[Anonymous Coward]

...no, that is a part of the EULA.

MS may however read any document written in a MS-font and they have the right to do so... they own the font...

I dont get it

[deconvolution]

For my understanding, the final font shape in a document is a result of running render engines with font files. For example, TrueType font file includes many instructions of how to draw those chars, and those instructions are executed by freetype/layout algorithm... etc.

From this point view, a font file is a kind of macro set, or, a program about drawing. The documents it produces should be not related to GPL. Like you dont need to open your data even it produced by a GPL program. Unless someone wants to use font files to their software applications.

Re:I dont get it

[entrigant]

While I agree a document written with gpl fonts is not a derivative work, I think you reasoning is a little insane. That'd be like saying the assembly output produced by gcc of a source file under the gpl is NOT covered by the gpl because the source file only has instructions on how to produce the assembly file. I'm afraid others here have come up with much more convicning arguments.

Re:I dont get it

[deconvolution]

I think you misunderstood.

Take your example, the assembly outputs do depend on the license of the raw souce code but NOT depend on what the license the gcc applies. Sometimes gcc even optimises the final output of your code by using some hints which use GPL but i guess gcc wont force you convert your souce code and final compiled assembly to GPL license.

Font file is like hints stored in gcc in the above case. It helps producing the final results but not a part of source.

enforced?

[l0perb0y]

I think all this argument is probably moot in that most GPL font developers aren't going to go after all the people who create documents using their font.

Having said that, if the language of the GPL requires documents using GPL'ed fonts to be GPL'ed themselves, maybe the GPL isn't compatible with something like a font.

BS

[jericho4.0]

This is bullshit FUD. Does timothy think that this hasn't been thought of before? As quoted above "As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. "

Slashdot gets trolled, again. Lame.

Re:What is GPL'd? The font or the text?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you extend the GPLd font by using the original font file.

If you just copy the GPL font's typeface, you can use it under any license you like, as you cannot copyright a type face, and the GPL thus cannot apply. There are specific restrictions in copyright law that disallow copyrighting the shape of a font.

Derived work

[claes]

GPL refers to derived work. It is foolish to believe that text that written in a word processor is a derived work from the font that is used. Written text is not derived from a font. Text is derived from thought processes in the author's brain. Chage the font - the message will still come across, the message is there even without the font. The font has nothing to do with the text, whether it is distributed with the document or not. It has as much to do with the content in the document as the color of the reader's glasses.

Re:Derived work

[theguywhosaid]

What if its a piece of ASCII art?

Re:Derived work

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case it's a derived work of the DEC VT100 terminal which forms the basis for modern console displays. In other words, as the the successor company, HP owns your ASCII art and you may not release it without written permission from them.

(Note: above is parody of this story)

Re:Derived work

[commodoresloat]

Copyright does not cover the author's idea; what it covers is the expression of the idea. So what would theoretically be derivative is the work as produced using the font -- the exact expression of the idea as printed on the page (or on the screen) using the "original" work, which is the font. I suspect this involves imagining a word processed document as a visual work of art rather than as text with meaning.

In any case, this is all ridiculous speculation, and the association with the GPL is pure FUD. The GPL is less restrictive than proprietary licenses or than ordinary copyright law. It allows redistribution of works without the "original" author's permission or knowledge. All it requires is redistribution of the code (presumably, the words themselves?) Whereas under ordinary copyright law, you simply cannot redistribute copyrighted work without permission. So if you use proprietary fonts, you should ask Adobe if it is ok to turn in your homework (or whatever). It's all bullshit. If the story is true, then the situation is even worse for proprietary fonts than for GPL.

Thankfully there is about zero chance that any font author is going to try to claim ownership of documents produced by their font, and if they did, everyone would simply stop using that particular font.

Re:Derived work

[Overzeetop]

Really?

I was under the impression that when Stephen King writes a novel, it is just as much copyrighted in Arial as in Times New Roman. Not only that, but a movie based on the book is also part of his IP, and he can sue if someone should make a movie based on his book without his permission.

As for FUD, I agree. It would be a pretty large stretch, and require a haberdashery full of tin foil to anticipate legal problems from this. No wonder it's getting so much play here on /.

Re:Derived work

[commodoresloat]

I was under the impression that when Stephen King writes a novel, it is just as much copyrighted in Arial as in Times New Roman. Not only that, but a movie based on the book is also part of his IP, and he can sue if someone should make a movie based on his book without his permission.

That's correct - that's one reason I think all this is FUD. That part of my post was an attempt to speculate as to why a font owner might think differently.

Re:Derived work

[m50d]

One could think the same about a program using readline to get its input, yet that counts as a derivative and has to be gpled.

Re:Derived work

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the *layout* of the document? That is (a) copyrighted, (b) depends on the font used, and (c) is often defined as a program written in PostScript, PDF or TeX.

Uhhh

[nurb432]

You just proved my point that BSD is more free.

I dont about your statement about the original intent when the BSD license was created. Unless you were there, and want to contradict its framers then you are wrong. They knew what they were doing, and the intent was pretty clear. It still is.

In general, my statements are all about relative amounts of freedom that are at issue with these licenses. In a relative sense, i am correct.

You may choose to hide your head in the sand even when presented with a prime example as the story topic but that doesnt make the reality of the GPL being *less free* and *viral at its core* go away.

Even the idiot who created the GPL *intended* it to be viral.. look at his reasonings for how its written.. It MEANT it to be viral so that everything 'must be free' and remove rights from the users of the code.. He didnt want one to have the rights to choose, as is with other licenses.

Geesh .. are all of you this dense not to see it? Im not saying you cant choose under which license you want to be *controlled* by, only that you see it for what it is.

Re:Uhhh

[ces]

Excuse me, but while it may be true BSD style licenses are "more free" than GPL (in the sense that one who is not the copyright holder is allowed to do more with the work under copyright), try comparing the GPL to any commercial software license for freedom.

Lets see: Can I modify a work under commercial license? probably not. Can I distribute those modifications? probably not. Can I give a copy of the work to my friend? probably not. If the work is a program can I install it on more than one comupter? probably not.

Furthermore as has been seen in the EULAs used by many websites such as online photo albums, commercial companies try to claim ownership of work they didn't create all the time.

Now why would someone use GPL in the first place? Well let's say I write a really nice networking stack. I don't particularly want someone else to be able to make modifications to my code and then claim the whole as their own. If I release my code as GPL then I know any changes or improvements anyone makes will be availible to everyone. If I release it under BSD someone has the option of taking both my code and the modifications to it propritary at any time.

Basicly it all boils down to what the copyright holder is comfortable with using to license their work and conversely what a user of said copyrighted work is comfortable with accepting in the way of license terms.

If you don't like the terms of the GPL then don't use things licensed under it. But for all the kvetching about how the GPL is "less free" than BSD-style licenses I guarentee that almost any commercial license will give you far less freedom than the GPL will.

Re:Uhhh

[Paridel]

If I release it under BSD someone has the option of taking both my code and the modifications to it propritary at any time

No no no! The only thing that would now be proprietary is the changes that other person made. You code would still be free. No one could take that away.

In fact, you are better off with this commercial product that he released. Because instead of just having your code you have your code + ideas on how to make it better.

Please tell me how he has made your code less free, your contribution less valuable, or in any way hurt you by his changes?

-paridel

Re:Uhhh

[civilizedINTENSITY]

If you had released under the GPL then your program is innoculated against propriatry closure. Code evolves. Your ideas are a seed that became a sapling, and then might go on to be a mighty tree. At the point in time that your code is grafted in to a proprietary piece of code, that evolutionary path of your idea is closed, forever (or life plus 70 years, to be extended). The further use of that now proprietary aspect of your (further evolved) idea is of no use to me, and even less than no use because the rest of the branch of the evolutionary chain is closed. If you had used the GPL, then eventually you or someone else would have explored that evolutionary niche and the result would have been available for cross-fertilization. It is exactly the blocking of this potential for closure that makes the "viral" nature of the GPL an innoculation rather than a virus.

Re:Uhhh

[the_womble]

BSD may be more free in an ideological sense but, in the real world, it is important to have a license that is more business friendly (for software companies). A license that allows your comptitors to get a free ride on your work is not.

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you're a lazy bastard and want other people to maintain your code for you.

A company creating a closed branch does not prevent you or someone else who wants to contribute from modifying the open version, if closed source is really as bad as it's claimed then the branch will eventually die or more likely be replaced by the same ideas incorporated into the primary open version, the community still wins but is more flexible at the same time. This argument is just further evidence that the GNU/GPL is a religion and the proponents have their own agendas beyond 'the good of all'.

The above concept is better for businesses because simply, they can take code, improve it with their own ideas and profit exclusively from their ideas for a few months until the community catches up, the community benefits from ideas they didn't think of and companies contribute indirectly without the risk that they won't be rewarded for their work (Assuming software patents are removed, they're evil). This drives innovation, something the GPL doesn't, if the GPL ever took over we would end up with with one dominant program in every category and all the others would wither (Companies go out of business if their product can be legally bought once and torrented to everyone in world for $50) since for most people there is little motivation to create a new product without some sort of reward for it. The software may have all the bugs fixed but there is very little, if any, choice on what to use.

The GPL is for lunatics

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great for system files (read: kernel) but it wreaks havoc on personal creative output.

Fuck it, anything I create will be copyRIGHTED, and making me money.

Controversey Lovers

[KidSock]

Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL.

For whatever reason, there are some people who just LOVE contronversey. They LIKE to get into big flame wars on mailing lists. These people are TROLLS and should be ignored. This one's not even close to being right. A document is not a derived work of a font. Is a document with copyrighted Adobe fonts subject to that font's license? If you extracted the font from the document and created a new font file THAT would be a violation but the document itself is a separate work. This is just like the apache fools who claim the LGPL is not suitable for Java libraries. The Sun libraries constitute the standard environment of the Java language. These guys need to actually read the GPL before that make such rediculous claims.

Also, the GPL and LGPL is slightly subject to some community interpretation. To some extent it is what we say it is. That's why what these folks are doing is also a little dangerous. I claim the LGPL is ok for Java libs. Who's going to stop me from shipping my library as LGPL? Linux binary only modules are not subject to GPL. Why? Because Linus says the're not derived works of the Kernel. I'm pretty sure everyone will conclude that documents that use GPL fonts should not be GPL. And therefore they aren't.

Ignore these IP-issue sensationalizing trolls. They just want something to argue about. Let them argue - in courier.

What about GRAPHICS?

[sH4RD]

I think the real issue here is more in graphics. If you release an image as a PNG which you had originally created in Photoshop, and used a GPL'd font, wouldn't you have to release the "source" (the original PSD) of said image? Isin't this a horrible, horrible thing for professional graphic designers (if it holds to be true)? Of course, I have probably arrived a little late in the discussion for this comment to really matter, but can anyone else comment on this?

Re:What about GRAPHICS?

[grumbel]

### Isin't this a horrible, horrible thing for professional graphic designers (if it holds to be true)?

Depends, when the graphic designer simply used a GPLed tool like Gimp he doesn't have to GPL his work, if he on the other side used a GPLed image from some clipart gallery, then yep, he would have to release the PSD/XCF file for the image. Would that be horrible? For the graphics designer maybe, but that might actually be exactly what the creator of the GPLed clipart intented, after all he spend time creating it, so why shouldn't the other share alike?

The throuble here however is that with images you might end up combining a lot of stuff, some might be GPL, some CC, some some royality free which is only allowed to use, but not to redistribute in source form. So the resulting work simply can't be licensed as GPL, since it includes copyrighted work which he might have no right to relicense.

Creative Common licenses address that to some extend, but they are incompatible with the GPL, which can cause throuble when you need to link your images into the binary, which is quite common for small applications or games, especially under windows.

Dual licensing is currently the best way to solve this, but its not really all that beatifull. Sadly the FSF hasn't done much at all to handle this situation a bit better and the GFDL is again far to special purpose to be usefull for other works of art (beside from it being more or less non-free of course).

Re:What about GRAPHICS?

[grcumb]

"If you release an image as a PNG which you had originally created in Photoshop, and used a GPL'd font, wouldn't you have to release the "source" (the original PSD) of said image?"

No.

The font story is a troll and this is thoughtless speculation.

HTH, HAND.

Intellectual Property for Fonts is Very Complex

[billstewart]

Fonts have a whole bunch of bizarre rules covering the intellectual property involved with them, so it's not surprising the GPL needs to e tweaked a bit to deal with them. The names tend to be trademarks (so you'll see fonts named "TmsRmn" which are obviously trying to indicate their similarity to the canonical Linotype "Times" Roman font ("Times is a Trademark of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG".) The black marks on paper tend not to be actually covered by copyright - if you design a font that makes the same black marks on paper as "Times", either using lead slugs or tiny bitmaps or whatever, you can use and sell it. That doesn't mean you can copy somebody else's copyrighted Postscript code, and you're probably not allowed to directly copy somebody else's bitmaps, even though you can make identical bitmaps of your own. (Yes, it's a really dodgy field...)

Some fonts *are* programs, like Postscript. Some are bunches of black dots (or other shapes like lines or ovals, or other colors, especially grays if you like anti-aliasing.) Some are bunches of equations. Some are programs in languages other than Postscript that implement equations to produce black dots. Some are stacks of twisty little metal pieces, all different, carved by hand. Some are programs to produce stacks of twisty little metal pieces.

Re:Intellectual Property for Fonts is Very Complex

[NutscrapeSucks]

Fonts have a whole bunch of bizarre rules covering the intellectual property involved with them,

Bizarre rules, but not as bizarre as "The Font maker has copyright rights over your book because you used their font". Whis is basically the 'bizarre' GPL argument here. If Adobe or Bitstream claimed this, they would be laughed at by the publishing industry.

I think the main issue is that the Free Software faction has convinced themselves that "Derived Works" is much more extensive than it actually is, and that leads to all sorts of ridiclous conclusions.

Versus...

[Greyfox]

The licensing issues don't arise using commerical fonts? I suspect someone with a vested commercial interest is attempting to discredit the GPL again. A lot of the time your app doesn't even sent the font to the printer, especially if the printer already has a version of the font on-board. I've also never seen a document that bundled the font with it. Possibly PDFs do, but your mileage may vary.

There are some possible exceptions way out there on the fringe, especially if the font itself is modified in some way, but 99.999 percent of business users will probably never have to worry about it.

Taking the logic to its idiotic extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument that the gpl would result in having to share my document with the world could easily be extended. If I use fonts that are copyrighted, then the owner of those fonts (Microsoft perhaps, Adobe perhaps) has some interest in any document that uses them. That hasn't ever been an issue in the history of publishing. As long as I pay the right license fees, nobody has any claim on my copyrighted work.

What everybody is missing about the gpl is that I am not forced to distribute my work to everybody in the world. The requirement in the gpl is that if I do distribute my code that I must distribute the source and any copyright statements. There is no statement that REQUIRES me to distribute anything. As long as I do not obfuscate the source of the fonts, I have no problem.

Who said the GPL was for everything?

[jbn-o]

And where, exactly, did you get the idea that RMS intended the GNU GPL to be "the perfect solution for every situation"?

Bigelow's Times Roman History

[billstewart]

Chuck Bigelow's history of Times Roman is a great document, and I should have included it along with Linotype's. Bigelow & Holmes did a number of important computer fonts, such as Lucida.

Stop spreading your anti-FUD FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit

[Apreche]

Ok, let's say that I make an HTML document with a gpl font. So that HTML document would have in it somewhere a tag that says . Guess what, the font isn't actually included in this html document, the font itself is a separate file that is not included in this HTML document. The document only includes the name of the font. I don't see how including the name of a gpl font in a document makes that document gpl. That would mean that a program that contains the word Linux in its source code must be GPL.

Now, let us say that I modified this GPL font or the font itself was embedded within a document file for distribution. Or that I wrote a program which utilizes this font. Then you could make a case.

Stupid

[101percent]

I didn't really take the time to thumb-through the list, but it sounds like the GPL crowd is starting to be just as draconian as our corporate overlords.

"You used our fonts so now your writing is GPL'd" doesn't sound too fair to me.

No, it doesn't.

[anthony_dipierro]

Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL.

No it doesn't. A derivative work which is derived from both your document and the fonts must be released under the GPL (which is different from saying that it automatically is released under the GPL), but in any case the document itself need not be released under the GPL. From the GPL:

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

Finally, all this needs to be combined with the fact that fonts are probably not copyrightable in the first place, at least not in the United States.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[Josh Triplett]

Finally, all this needs to be combined with the fact that fonts are probably not copyrightable in the first place, at least not in the United States.

Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. Truetype fonts are copyrightable.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[anthony_dipierro]

Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. Truetype fonts are copyrightable.

The algorithm used to create the font is copyrightable, but the font itself is not.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

You better talk to Adobe about postscript fonts. And to others about truetype fonts.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[dvdeug]

The algorithm used to create the font is copyrightable, but the font itself is not.

The font file is copyrightable. The outlines, abstracted from the code isn't, but TrueType fonts, as the word font is often used, is copyrightable.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[anthony_dipierro]

Right, so using GPL-licensed fonts in a document doesn't require you to license your document under the GPL.

Re:No, it doesn't.

[dvdeug]

Right, so using GPL-licensed fonts in a document doesn't require you to license your document under the GPL.

Unless you embed your font in the PDF or PS file thus "link"ing them together. Then it becomes a lot more hazy.

Sounds totally bogus to me

[spitzak]

Simple counter example: Bitstream has copyrighted their fonts. You are not allowed to manufactur a printer and make it print Bitstream's fonts without paying them a royalty. Yet Bitstream has no problems with you printing a document using those fonts. There is no copyright exception in their license. It is just assummed that such obviously intended use does not violate copyright. Same is true for a copyright with a GPL exception.

creative commons anybody?

[jack_call]

This is why creative commons is so much better for works of art, sure it's not entirely free, GNU, RMS and whatnot, but it'll work alot better, and we'll all be alot happier.

Surely

[fozzmeister]

It makes you in violation, not your document OSS, like if a company adds GPL sources to a closed source product. it does not automatically make the product OSS, It makes them in violation of the contract (license).

It would have to goto court and damages be awarded.

A field full of failed feverish freedom affronts.

[jbn-o]

The Free Software Foundation is the chief proponent of the GNU General Public License because they wrote the license years before there was an "open-source" movement. If anyone is going to have a field day, it will be those who want to advertise how they don't understand when the GPL is meant to be used and also want to make fun of the freedoms the GPL was written to protect.

IANAL too!

[Anonymous Coward]

We should totally meet up!

This has happened before

[lakeland]

I remember an early version of yacc was GPLed (GPL v1 from memory). That included the boiler-plate code which it inserted into your program, which means every parser built using it was using GPLed code.

Just as in this case, that was an accident and after much apologising the yacc people relicenced the boilerplate code to public domain. It simply is not the intention of free software developers to 'infect' other programs.

I would anticipate a very similar solution in this case. The licence for the fonts just needs a minor tweak explicitly allowing their inclusion and everything goes back to how you'd expect.

It's legalesse. People stuff up occasionally. When they notice, they fix it and move on.

Static vs. dynamic linking

[jonatha]

I understand FSF asserts a program that dynamically links to a GPL library is a derived work of that library, hence subject to the GPL.

I have tried without success to discover the legal reasoning behind that assertion. Anybody know?

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[mattyrobinson69]

the only difference between the GPL (afaik) and the LGPL is the LGPL allows non-gpl'd programs to link to lgpl libraries, GPL does not. lgpl used to stand for library general public license, but apparently too many people were using it so they renamed it to the lesser general public license.

The idea behind the not linking to gpl libraries is so that companies cant use gpl'd libraries with non-gpl software (linking to a gpl library counts as using gpl'd code in your project).

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[Anonymous Coward]

the only difference between the GPL (afaik) and the LGPL is the LGPL allows non-gpl'd programs to link to lgpl libraries, GPL does not.

Please, please, understand that GPL doesn't limit use. It limits distribution. You can link anything you want to GPL code. You just can't always distribute it.

The idea behind the not linking to gpl libraries is so that companies cant use gpl'd libraries with non-gpl software

I do that all the time and it's prefectly legal. Of course we're not a software company and we use GPL code internally.

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[Mr. Slippery]

I understand FSF asserts a program that dynamically links to a GPL library is a derived work of that library, hence subject to the GPL. I have tried without success to discover the legal reasoning behind that assertion.

Quoth the FSF:

What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged).

If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means combining them into one program.

By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.

I'm not sure I agree that the fact that modules are designed to run in a shared address space means in itself that they should be considered one work. There's going to have to be a legal ruling on that at some point, I think.

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[Ashtead]

From what I have understood from the GPL, and specifically that quote of it, it seems that the criterion for sufficiently close linkage for the GPL's "derived work" can be identified as "the same process". Like the parent poster says, there needs to be a legal ruling, but for now, this seems to be what is meant by the language in the GPL. (IANAL...)

Now with fonts being executable code, (some kind of shared library or DLL) running in the process of the word processor or printer formatting program, wouldn't the GPL's conditions for close linkage also apply to these programs? The document is more of a carrier; though the presence of font-statements could be construed as invocations of the code in the font-libraries, and thus the document would become a kind of source code itself.

By publishing the source code of the fonts along with the document, this GPL requirement would seem to be satisfied. However, the GPL may still clash with other restrictions that the document author may want to impose, for example, if the document describes something that must be kept confidential, this will conflict with the GPL requirement of no additional restriction on distribution. Even making the fonts LGPL wouldn't get around this one.

However, the purpose of documents really is to disseminate information that in itself is completely irrelevant to the word processor or printer, not unlike the comments of source code or shell scripts. But unlike these, the execution of font code is incidential to this main purpose, and shouldn't get in the way.

Perhaps the situation could be resolved by looking at the analogy of an interpreter. The word processor would be the interpreter program, the fonts would correspond to specialty libraries, and the document would be the script to be interpreted. Let us presume the easiest case of the interpreter being closed-source, and the libraries being LGPL so there is no a priori conflict there. What will be the possible licences of the script?

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[Mr. Slippery]

From what I have understood from the GPL, and specifically that quote of it, it seems that the criterion for sufficiently close linkage for the GPL's "derived work" can be identified as "the same process".

Nither the GPL nor the FSF gets to define what constitutes a derivative work. That's comes purely from copyright law, and it's still vague when applied to software.

The FSF has its opinions on the matter, and is not shy about expressing them, but we shouldn't mistake their intention or explanation of the GPL for its actual legal meaning.

Perhaps the situation could be resolved by looking at the analogy of an interpreter.

I think the best analogy for a library is...a library. If I'm writing a book and go to my dead-trees library, photocopy a bunch of pages from FooBar in a Nutshell and include them in my book, my book's clearly a derivative work. But if I say in my book "See Sections 1.7, 2.3, 2.7.18, and 3.14 of FooBar in a Nutshell", my book is not a derived work, even though it requires the reader to have FooBar in a Nutshell in their library to use it.

That's true even if the two books are meant to be used together. Say my book is a cookbook, and the referred book is a book of descriptions of cooking techniques, and you have to have them both open on your kitchen counter to get something cooked - in the same "reading space" if you will. My book is still not a derivative work.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan and supporter of the FSF and the GPL. I just don't agree with this specific assertation made by the former about the latter.

Re:Static vs. dynamic linking

[m50d]

The fsf asserts it based on how it thinks the court interprets these things. Clearly many companies believe the same, otherwise they wouldn't for example license qt to make propriety products with it. My guess would be it's because the berne convention says you need permission from the copyright holder of every part of anything before you distribute it. The function bits included in the binary for a dynamic program are probably enough to be copyrightable, in which case the library copyright holder can dictate terms for the whole thing. Also, the program as a whole makes no sense without the library, so the library is clearly a part of it.

Solomonian decision, anyone?

[RedLaggedTeut]

If you'd ask me for me for a wise decision on this, I would say that the document constituted a derived works subject to the GPL only as long as the GPL font is being used.

If you want to be difficult, you could say that then terms similar to the LGPL should have been used. Adding a font exception clause is like shooting the GPL in the foot, though, by over-emphasizing its viral nature:

The GPL already reads: applies to a "derivative work under copyright law". Clearly coypright law applies to the text by itself and the font by itself, and even to the combination, but as far as I am concerned, it (should) reverts to the copyright applicable to the text as soon as the text is separated from the font by whatever means.

An exception might be if the GPL font is a special OCR font and thus is instrumental in the separation process.

This has happened before-GPL2:Judgement day.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's legalesse. People stuff up occasionally. When they notice, they fix it and move on."

Unfortunately the antagonistic nature of the GPL, means that we'll be seeing a lot more "apologizing", and "tweaking" in the future.*

*Yacc, web services, libraries (LGPL), fonts, what next?

Nonsense

[cfulmer]

I am not a lawyer. Go see one if you need advice.

By my reading, there are two cases in which the GPL requires you to allow others to reproduce your work.

1. If you "modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it ... and copy and distribute such modifications ..." (Paragraph 2).

Even if you assume that the font is a "Program," you are not modifying your copy of the font by using it.

2. "You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form ... provided that you also do one of the following...."

Fonts are not in either object code or executable form, so no problem here.

3. "Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license form the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program...."

But, that's not a problem -- they get your document and they get a right to modify the font from the original licensor.

Incidently, how many GPL'd fonts are distributed with the font equivalent of "Source Code" -- the data file used by whatever font program you used?

One reason that we have so many competing Open Source Licenses is that the GPL is not exactly clear in a lot of areas. For example, section 2 says "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program," and a "work based on the program" is defined to be "the program or any derivative work under copyright law." But, does that mean that section 2 applies to all derivative works or only to modificiations of the original program? I'm guessing the intent was that it should apply to all derivative works, but it actually reads like it only applies to modifications. Not all derivative works are modifications.

There's a rule of construction in contract cases that says that you "construe the contract against the drafter." In the case of fonts, that probably means that writing a document using a font is not covered by the GPL.

Re:Nonsense

[n6kuy]

Hmmm...
If the GPL is all about "programs" and their "source code", and since fonts aren't programs (they are just data, aren't they?), can fonts even be GPL'd?

Re:Nonsense

[LX.onesizebigger]

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work ...

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mentipon that PS and PDF "documents" and TT and PS "Fonts" are in fact code! PDF and PS documents contain data sure, but the code in them (Yes, PS is a programming language) far outweighs the data in mass. Fonts are also code and embedding code in code is, well, 100% GPLable.

Re:Nonsense

[EzInKy]

Unlike the GPL, Microsoft technology licenses are not viral. You pay for the right to use them in your own proprietary works. You can statically link MFC into your own Windows app without losing ownership of the resulting app to MS. You just don't own MFC. You can use MS fonts as you like, as long as you have a valid license, and any document you embed them in is still yours. (The FONT isn't yours, but you have some redistribution rights that you paid for.)

Of course those using your works would need a valid Microsoft license too. And suppose Microsoft goes to a subscription based license model? Wouldn't people have to perpetually shell out money to them to be able to use each others works? Thanks, but no thanks.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike the GPL, Microsoft technology licenses are not viral.

Wrong, unless you by "Microsoft technology licenses" mean only certain licenses (like MFC), and not Microsoft in general (does MS do anything that is NOT "technology"?).

You can't embed Windows into your project without being bound by the Windows license - which basically says "no distribution". So that license is "viral".

Not quite the case...

[BobPaul]

I'll defend it. If it's my font, in that I hold the copyright, I can impose whatever conditions I like on you distributing documents made of it.

Unfortunately, not quite true. Checking the font FAQ, since you can only copyright a scalable font (not TypeFace designs or Bitmap fonts) I could print out my document, thus making it type face, and then I wouldn't have to worry about your license.

Also, since most document formats only tell the document viewer "use this font if it's installed, otherwise use the system default font," so long as I don't specifically embed your font into my document, distributing my document would fall outside your control.

What you could do is state that whenever I distribute a copy of your font (since that's what you hold copyright to) I have to stand on my head and whistle. This would also mean whenever I distribute my document in PDF format or some other format that embeds the font within the file I could have to stand on my head and whistle, but...

if I don't embed the font my file doesn't contain any information about your font other than your font name before the text I requested my document editor to format using your font. My document will load just fine without your font, it just won't look as purdy.

IANAL, but in-so-much as I understand the way of things, this is how it works.

Not Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

If you compile a program and link it against a GPL'd library, the GPL license "infects" your program and you have to release your code under the GPL.

I do not see how this would be any different for anyone who uses a FONT tag or a style sheet.

And you say GPL isnt viral-Free-basing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is exactly one way for code you wrote to end up under the GPL: you put it there explicitly. No other way. None."

Or GPLers, "borrow" it, and incorperate it into their code. Something I might add that the BSD license does allow.

Re:And you say GPL isnt viral-Free-basing.

[evanbd]

Well, that only works if you gave them permission, through whatever means. If you didn't give permission, then they're committing copyright infringement.

Re: copyright and linking

[benjamindees]

the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is use. It's not copying.

By your estimate, we all commit copyright violations every time we fire up a program in Windows and it gets copied into RAM, or linked to proprietary Microsoft libraries. Hell, by this estimation, reverse engineering is illegal.

Even though the MS EULA says it gives you permission to make copies of the software in RAM for the purpose of using the software, that's not what gives you this ability. Fair use is what gives you the right to use software you've purchased, just like fair use gives you the right to copy music onto a different format (or to listen to it on players with skip protection), or run ROMs of games that you own in an emulator. CDs don't come with license agreements, do they?

This is only bolstered by the fact that you haven't actually distributed it to anyone else in any of these circumstances. It's all internal, therefore there isn't even a cause of action. Copyright doesn't even apply.

Okay, I'll respond to that FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think BSD has been outpaced by Linux/GPL?

Amateur coders trying to compete with WIndows by throwing in as many new, untested features as they can into a production kernel (2.6)?

Hey, you're spreading FUD about BSD, so I'll spread FUD about Linux. Meanwhile, the biggest UNIX distribution out there, OS X, is based off...BSD.

BSD hasn't been outpaced at all. Development still occurs at a fast pace. Slashdot just doesn't report on it as much as it does for Linux, where every minor point release gets a front page article. Don't shape your worldview based on Slashdot headlines!

I see no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's see, if you distribute the document to the public, you have to distribute the source which in this case becomes... the document. If you don't distribute, then you don't have to distribute. Am I the only one that sees no problem with this??

Gee, why the GPL is not taken seriously..

[Bodhammer]

This is the stupidest thing I have every heard of. If I write a letter with my big red pencil and my "Big Chief" pad, am I oppressing Native American's too?

Shakespear was right - Henry VI Part 2, act iv: scene ii: THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET'S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS

Re:Gee, why the GPL is not taken seriously..

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we identify the lawyers ?
...is it a genetic difference, like a mutation ?
...could we create a virus that wouuld kill all people with this defect ?

Thats idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

Its like saying any image manipulation I do with The Gimp is subject to the GNU

How can the GPL affect fonts?

[Eric Smith]

I don't understand. The GPL requires that when you distribute object code, you make the source code available. What is the "source code" for a font?

Documents are not code

[borgheron]

IANAL, but here goes:

The GPL repeatedly refers to "the Program" or "a Program" and it's "source code".

A document, which is data, cannot be construed to be code, it's quite as simple as that.

Using a font, in the document, further, does not make the document a "derivative work" of the font nor does the document "link with" the font in the usual sense, as the document only references the font in it's metadata.

In short. The author of the above article is totally full of it and doesn't know what he/she is talking about as are all of the fine souls on the scribus list.

GJC

Re:Documents are not code

[Anonymous Coward]

PostScript is a programming language; PostScript documents are programs written in the PostScript language.

PDF is also a programming language; PDF documents are programs written in the PDF language.

TrueType is a programming language; TrueType fonts are programs written in the TrueType language.

If a PostScript document contains an embedded TrueType font, then the code of the font is included in the PostScript program of the document. That's exactly the same situation as if object code from a library is statically linked into an executable.

Maybe not Intended...

[CaptainPinko]

...but logically speaking isn't this just a continuation of "Information wants to be Free"? I don't see where in that phrase "source code""informaion".

Ideally all information *WOULD* be free.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The falicy and bad logic of the "font arguement"

[DrKludge]

Under the same logic used for this "font arguement", any document created with a GPL licensed software would be covered by the GPL. So a picture created using The Gimp would be by default a GPL'd document image. I don't believe that this is the case, as the GPL covers any modifications made to the product that the GPL covers. But I don't think that a new image created The Gimp is nessarily covered by the GPL. Moreover a program compiled by the GCC I don't think nessescarily is covered by the GPL. Moreover, it would make anyone using GnuPG software in violation of its licence simply because they are not distributing the source of the message that they send using the software.

For me it follows, that a document created, then rendered using a GPL font would not be covered by the GPL. I would think that if you modified the font itself, then released the rendered document to the public you are compelled to release the source to the modifications of the font. Furthermore, if you release a docuement rendered using a GPL font, you might also be compelled to release the source the font that the document is using.

However, if the document, or software that you modify and is covered by the GPL, I do not think that you are compelled to release any changes. That just makes no sense at all for variety of reasons.

But I am no lawyer, nor do I know what specific licenses GnuPG, GCC or the Gimp are released under, so I could be completely wrong.

unintended results

[timmarhy]

this sounds more like authors of fonts being caught out, the GPL isn't the be all and end it. in a lot of cases it's nothing but a pain in the arse.

Font exception is ridiculous...

[gatkinso]

...a hack that is similar to code written by firt year undergrads.

(Well sone first year undergrads, anyway...)

Make the exception generic enough to apply to any content - a line should be drawn between the code and the content.

Err....no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say I have a copy of a GPL'ed interpreter for an interpreted language.

Now say I write a program using that language. The program is not renderable/usable without the GPL'ed interpreter.

Is my program covered by the GPL? Not on your life. Despite the fact that it USES GPL'ed code, and even REQUIRES GPL'ed code to be runable, my original program in no way is subject the GPL--I have not modified any GPL'ed code, and I do not have an obligation to release my code.

Now let's say I package my code with the GPL'ed interpreter, put it on a CD, and distribute it to my customers. The GPL governs how I can distribute their interpreter--I have to include the source code and not place restrictions on the use of it. But it does NOT require me to place my code (even on the very same CD) under the GPL--I can still require and charge a license for my program, and restrict distribution of it. If I package my proprietary code and GPL'ed code in this way, the GPL still applies ONLY to the GPL'ed code.

Now let's say I make a .tar file of the files on my CD....

You get the idea. Even if there's a GPL restriction on font distribution, and even if that attaches to distributing the font with the document, then maybe there's an argument that there's a GPL violation by not providing font source code along with the document. But even if this is true, my original work (even a work DEPENDENT on GPL'ed code) is STILL NOT subject to the GPL.

There's just no basis for the GPL attaching itself to other code just because that code is not in iteself useful without GPL'ed code.

Re:Err....no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry--left out a key part of my argument.

Let's say I DON'T follow the GPL with the distribution of my CD. I don't include the source for the GPL'ed interpreter. What happens?

Clearly, I've violated the GPL. Basically, I'm liable to the creator of the GPL'ed code for distributing their code in violation of the license. And if they complain, I may not be permittied to keep distributing my CD without making modifications to bring the GPL'ed code into compliance with the GPL.

What does this mean for my code on the same CD? Absolutly nothing! The GPL doesn't somehow get to claim my code as some kind of compensation for my GPL violation. It's mine. It's private.

So, there's just no basis in thinking the GPL issue for the font could ever trigger "GPL'ing" of the content of the document.

The only interesting issue, IMO, is whether the font issue could result in the situation I describe with my CD--that distributing it without also including the font source would mean there's an issue with me distributing my document.

I haven't RTFA yet but...

[erroneus]

This sounds like complete and utter FUD.

The GPL is about taking an existing free work, adding to it and then giving it back to the community who owns it. If I compiled code using 'gcc' would the binary resulting then become subject to the GPL? I don't think so.

While a font isn't a tool like gcc, it's still an unmodified component used. At the very worst, you might be required to accompany the font(s) used to create the document along with the GPL agreement, but to require the document become GPL is utter ridiculousness. (Is that a word? if it's not, then I hereby copyright, trademark and patent the word.)

Okay, now I'm going to read this article, but I still think this is bullshit... this truly violates the spirit of the GPL as I do not consider a document to be a derivative work of a font any more than house is a derivative work of the paint used in coating the walls.

Re:I haven't RTFA yet but...

[MikeBabcock]

The only issue I see is that if you were to produce a PostScript output of your document with embedded fonts, you'd end up with the document's source *including* the font's source in rendering if you did it wrong.

If you did it right, the font PS would essentially be a "system header file" for your output.

..and fonts are programs.

[PCM2]

Fonts aren't "other content." They are software. You may be confusing a font with a typeface. A typeface is just a certain way of rendering the letters of the alphabet and these, generally speaking, cannot be copyrighted. GPL license or some other license, it doesn't matter; you cannot copyright them. What you can copyright, however, are the PostScript instructions that render the font on a computer. Those are considered programs like any other. When you use an Adobe font without paying for it, you're not violating the copyright on the letterforms -- you're pirating software.

Re:..and fonts are programs.

[WetCat]

But it's actually a good idea to separate fonts into being an "other content" from the point of Free Software licensing policy. People aren't really expect fonts to be programs, even it's so in the internal side of things.
May be GPFL?

Ummm

[Amiga Lover]

You just told the OP they write complete and utter rubbish, then go on to agree unequivocally with them.

Methinks you misinterpreted things when you tried to redefine "electronic typeface file" which is already defined as "font" in the OPs comments.

Which as they correctly said, is copyrightable but the typeface itself is not.

Aaah, somebody with more than 2 braincells.

[Qbertino]

Please mod parent up.
That comment is right on.

Re:Aaah, somebody with more than 2 braincells.

[Star_Gazer]

No, he is wrong, as everyone here, IMHO (but IANAL). A true type or type 1 font can be considered a program, and embedding it in i.e. a PDF file could be considered as linking to a program library.

It's not about OpenOffice files with fonts set to "GPL Arial" or whatever, or a rendered image of the text "RMS is a moron" in a JPG created with Gimp.

Again, IANAL, but that's the way I would interpret it.

Sven

Re:Aaah, somebody with more than 2 braincells.

[borgheron]

You're making a few very large legal leaps here.

In contract law, the contract is always read against the drafter. It is obvious, from looking at the GPL that it is referring to programs in the normal sense. The intent is to cover programs, not documents with embedded fonts which could be considered programs. Intent is what forms the legal relationship. If the intent was only to cover programs in the usual sense, then that's all it shall cover. There are other parts of the GPL, for instance, which can be misread.

For instance, what if I create a web application and I use GPL software? If I allow people outside of my company access to the website, do I have to make the modified source or the source to my application available? To an inexperienced person, it might seem to be the case, since the GPL simply talks about "distribution" but fails to mention what distribution means. It is obvious, however, that it means for me to sell or ultimately to give you a copy of the program in binary form.

Fonts, no matter how they are drawn, whether with postscript or bitmap are considered to be *content* and nothing more. Besides, even if it were considered to make my document GPL how would I "distribute the source" to said document. Even if the font is a program, the document itself isn't. The GPL doesn't say anything about linking programs with non-programs now does it? (No, it doesn't) :)

Later, GJC

The copyright doesn't come into play.

[MikeFM]

It'd only matter if you were tightly linking to the font anyway which I can't imagine a document doing.

You're not combining a program with a program. You're using what is essentially an external service available from another program, the font, to render your document.

Unless you're document includes parts of the font or links internally to parts of the font then the copyright shouldn't come into play. It's the same as the Linux kernel being GPL but user-level programs, and in soem cases even drivers, can use Linux services and run on Linux without becoming GPL.

Re:The copyright doesn't come into play.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The problem, Mike, is when you embed the font. This is the "tightly linking to the font" that you can't imagine a document doing. PDF files can do this, so that fonts you use on your computer will still show up on a computer that doesn't have the same fonts that you have.

Re:The copyright doesn't come into play.

[MikeFM]

It depends how they are embeded. If they are somehow deep linked then I can see this being true. If they are just included as a convienence then I think it'd not be true.

Does PDF actually link somewhere inside the files rather than just including them inside the PDF document? If so, why?

You can include a copy of the font with your document, even stored internally, and it isn't deep linking. You'd actually need to meddle with the font internals for this to become an issue.

Re:The copyright doesn't come into play.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

As soon as you embed the font, in any way, you are distributing software. The font is a program that details how to draw and achieve a typeface. The typeface isn't copyrightable, but the software description of how to achieve the result is. Thus, embedding the font is distribution.

Re:The copyright doesn't come into play.

[MikeFM]

But it doesn't infect all the other software you're distributing. You can include GPL and non-GPL together in a distribution without their licenses infected each other.

Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what will you do if I choose to infringe your copyright as millions do on P2P networks? Will you choose to go after me legally as the RIAA has done toward its infringers?

And will Slashdot post something about it portraying me as a hero or a bad guy?

Re:Copyright?

[m50d]

Yes, but in a nicer way. I'll send you a C&D asking you to gpl your document or use another font. Since I'm not demanding money straight away and am standing up for the gpl, you're pretty sure to appear the villan.

I'd view it as a collection of GPL entities

[Black Copter Control]

It'd be inclined to view a document containing GPL font characters as a collection of GPL entities. As such, it might require you to make the source of the font available to anybody you send the document to (not a bad thing, in and of itself), but the document wouldn't be a derivative work of the font unless it included (for example) a listing of the font's source.

Such a use would, if nothing else, arguably fit under the 'fair use' provisions of US copyright law.

Documents are not code-Patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

"A document, which is data, cannot be construed to be code, it's quite as simple as that."

You might want to look at the legal framework surrounding software patents before you say that.

Re:Documents are not code-Patents.

[borgheron]

I understand patents quite well. Please see my petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01 for more information. The petition was written by myself, RMS and a few others.

The governing force of any contract or license is intent. Was it the intention of the FSF to force documents to be under the GPL, I think not. This is evidenced by the use of "The Program" all over the document.

Additionally, we're talking copyrights here. Patents are a different beast entirely.

Re:Documents are not code-Patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

And has been pointed out. Fonts are programs. Sorry about your luck guys, but that's what happens when you try to remake the world in the GPL image.

Re:Documents are not code-Patents.

[borgheron]

Font's are not programs. :)

I think people who deprecate the GPL are funny, I really do. Because they consistently miss the point.

It won't stand up in a court of law, and that's what's important. Fonts are *content* no matter how they are generated, whether by postscript or bitmap. Prove otherwise in a court of law and I'll be quite amazed.

You can go on simply believing what you're told.

GJC

Re:Documents are not code-Patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Font's are not programs. :)"

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fonts-faq/part2/

"However, scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office, computer programs, and as such are copyrightable:

'... the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts
using already-digitized typeface represents a significant change in the
industry since our previous [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision. We
are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating
typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices
may involve original computer instructions entitled protection under the
Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output
programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of
characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the
instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions
is neither limited by the unprotectable shape of the letters nor
functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual
standard of authorship, is thus registerable as a computer program." 57
FR 6202.'"

"I think people who deprecate the GPL are funny, I really do. Because they consistently miss the point."

Keep the faith and drink the kool-aid, brother.

"It won't stand up in a court of law, and that's what's important. Fonts are *content* no matter how they are generated, whether by postscript or bitmap. Prove otherwise in a court of law and I'll be quite amazed."

You however are not a "court of law". So I'm quite free to believe what I will. As will a real court.

"You can go on simply believing what you're told."

In black and white, baby.

What's a font?

[Senor_Programmer]

In the sense under discussion, it's the code that makes the output that the particular(specific to that font) collection of aspect and attribute accrue. It's not said output. The GPL distinction between a program and it's output is a dead horse on /. Absurdiums: 1) A license copy with each letter? 2) Some extortionist might cut an 'i' from a document rendered from GPL fonts and use it in his letter of merit. The letter is now incorporated by 'scribes' FUD interpretation of the GPL making it part of the public domain. Damn, now the public is party to extortion and we're all going to jail.

Why do free fonts need licences?

[xoboots]

"Free" Fonts seem the type of thing that can stand in the public domain and don't need licensing and copyright protection. A hammer is great tool, but just because you have one doesn't mean that everything is nail.

GPL seems so troublesome lately

[billcopc]

Everywhere you look, there's a GPL violation, or it's causing someone problems. What's the basic idea we want to convey in a license ? We hear about GPL "infection" and how some projects completely avoid using GPL'ed libraries because they don't want to GPL their whole work. Can't we just say "Use it as you like, but XYZ still owns it so you can't sell it." in legalese and get rid of all these nasty side effects ? Here we have a font being the source of an IP dispute. That is akin to saying whatever you dictate to your typist becomes the typist's property, not just the printed sheet but the information itself. That is some of the most ridiculous logic I've seen in quite a while.

Re:GPL seems so troublesome lately

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Sun's CDDL.

Remember Copyright is evil

[Snaller]

...regardless of which side uses it...

wouldn't stand

[xoboots]

This is kind of moronic. How does specifying the use of a font in a document make that document a derived work of that font, exactly? Another font based on the original font would be a derived work but that is all. Otherwise, it is like saying a page served by apache is a derived work of apache and that is just plain wrong.

MOD PARENT UP

[Paridel]

This is true... people throw the term FUD around way too much.

I knew...

[flawedgeek]

...that giving that GPL font to Bill Gates was a good idea.

Nonsense ...

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry,

but when a Font is published under GPL a document pesented using said font is not covered by the GPL.

Licenses on copyrighted work only cover: derived works, adaptions and things liek a perciflage.

Read up the relevant paragraph of copyright law.

You need a very far stretched fantasy to believe a newly invented writing, regardless on what topic, is a derived work from the font it is presentated in.

angel'o'sphere

IP==Tower of Babel

[grumpygrodyguy]

it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL

That's probably the stupidest thing I've read in weeks.

If any IP lawyers read slashdot these days, you might give The Tower of Babel. another read.

Its pointless, no judge would ever enforce it

[voss]

1) Such a license term would be thrown out in court for multiple reasons...including unconcionability

2) Anyone who tried to enforce such an interpretation would be countersued for a bazillion dollars for extortion. It would make the GPL people look 1000 times worse than SCO.

3) You cant claim ownership of a document simply by virtue owning the rights to make the equipment it was created with. The copyright on authored text documents(books,etc) is separate from copyright of computer source code of GPL product.

Re:Its pointless, no judge would ever enforce it

[Anonymous Coward]

Nont of that will stop the GPL Gestapo from hunting you like a dog if they get wind of a font violation though.

And in many ways, that is far worse. They are a lynch mob, they take "justice" into their own hands. It doesn't matter at all what the courts say.

Render unto the GPL...

[LittleBigScript]

I hearby opensource all of trolls and flames sent to news groups. Also, I will post all angry letters to the editor, sent via email, concerning Terri Schiavo.

Or should I do us all a favor and lose the source?

Doesn't make a lot of sense whatsoever.

[MerlinTheWizard]

It's (almost) exactly as though CD makers said that they would hold the rights on any music recorded on those CDs. Blah. Oopsie, I wonder whether I have just given some really bad ideas to some CD makers here... ;-)

Get a grip, folks

[FhnuZoag]

Really, calm down. We're anticipating a lawsuit here that hasn't happened, and that no one is intending to have happen. The key words here are unintended consequences. Fallout. Collateral damage. There is no suggestion at all of this being part of some grand plot by RMS and the FSF to bring the world into some communist fiefdom. If you want evidence of lack of such an intention, note that it is on the FSF/GNU website that the admendments are given to get rid of this legal loopyness.

For this to be abused, someone would have to create a font, bambozzle someone with valuable content into using it, and then spring a legal challenge to enforce it. This is not a very probable scenario, and there is little to gain from any such lawsuit for any side. But because of this chance of a problem, steps are being taken to resolve it.

There, done. Storm in a teacup.

Here is my take

[LittleBigScript]

Just a forewarning, IANA, but my impression is ...

(Removed due to copyright restricitons)

...which I think is how we can get around all of this. If we just do this it will allow us to use the GPL more effectively. Any questions?

LaTeX source

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, does that mean I have to open-source my document?

Because I have all sorts of nasty comments in my LaTeX source that shouldn't be viewed by mortals...

It's not about using fonts

[Star_Gazer]

but about embedding them. If I create a PDF file and embed a GPLed font, that may (IANAL) lead to the obligation to license the entire document under the GPL.

This is not important for private documents you don't publish, since you are not obliged to publish private modifcations you do to any GPL software, but maybe for every document you publish with fonts included.

Is a font a program? IMHO yes, for vector fonts (TrueType, Type 1), since they include instructions that are interpreted by the font rendering engine of the OS or whatever to render the font on the screen or printer.

Of course, the idea that I install GPLed fonts on my system, use them in OpenOffice (without embedding them) would force me to license the document under the GPL is nonsense - the document still works without the font on another machine.

Sven

Oh, I don't know about that.

[cbreaker]

I really don't think a company could be held responsible if their modified non-open GPL-based software was leaked. They were in compliance; someone else broke the license by distributing the software that was not supposed to be.

Re:Oh, I don't know about that.

[Tim C]

They were in compliance; someone else broke the license by distributing the software that was not supposed to be.

How so? The GPL does not allow you to place any further restrictions on recipients of the covered work - if a company GPLs something they cannot prevent it from being distributed.

That obviously means that if they sell it, or otherwise give it to a third party, that third party can give it to whoever they want. What I'm not clear about is internal distribution. Say one of my colleagues gives me something covered by the GPL. Can I then distribute it? Is this legally seen as a company giving the thing to itself, or an employee of the company giving it to another employee? If the latter, then I don't see how the company can prevent me from giving it to anyone I want. And what about when I leave? I don't see that the company can demand that I destroy any copies of the work, and I become a private citizen, entirely unconnected to the company, with a copy of a GPLed work in my possession...

Re:Oh, I don't know about that.

[cbreaker]

No, see.. if a company makes CHANGES to a GPL software and uses it internally, they don't HAVE to distribute it, and if someone did - against company policy and intention - I don't see how you think the company is now responsible to distributing it?

The insinuation is ridiculous. Nobody would ever be able to run modified GPL programs because they'd all have to have a delivery infrastructure in place to give people their changes all the time.

That's not in the spirit of the GPL or OSS and that's not the type of system the GPL was intended to create.

artistic property

[4_Minor_Drawbacks]

wait, isn't the font characters a different artistic medium than the writing? also, wouldn't the writing be a creation separate from the font? the means of production alienated from the product?

Using GPL software to do something non GPL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely it would be similar to using GPL software to create a document. Using OpenOffice to create a document surely does not place the document under the GPL. If the font is embedded then I can see the possibility although it's still use not integration.

Re:I hate the term "FUD"

[LtOcelot]

Ah, but it was used correctly in the post you're responding to! That was a response to someone using this issue to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding the potential dangers of the GPL.

you are all such idiots

[iamnotanumber6]

why is anyone even talking about this?

the idea that using a gpl font in your document somehow makes *what you write* a derivative work of the font and therefore subject to the gpl is absolute unadulterated uninformed utter nonsense of the worst kind.

if you embed an actual, useable, copyrighted font file into your "document" along with what you wrote, then yes there may be restrictions on distributing it. this has nothing to do with whether it is gpl or not, it applies to any copyrighted font file. in fact, this just shows an *advantage* of using gpl fonts, because you are much more free to distribute them than you would be with a commercial copyrighted font.

either way it has absolutely nothing to do with what you wrote in the document. no-one ever gains any right to distribute or copy your text because you used a certain font, gpl or otherwise.

i'm getting awfully tired of hearing people talk about the gpl as though it can force them to do or not do things that normal copyright wouldn't. gpl starts from the baseline of copyright, and gives away certain rights to the public. by definition, it is always less restrictive than "all rights reserved" copyright. anything you can do with normal copyrighted material, you can do with gpl material.

the idea that the gpl "appears to make the use of GPL fonts undesirable in almost any document", as compared to the use of "all rights reserved" fonts, is the most outright looney thing i've heard on slashdot since... well maybe yesterday...

nothing to see here... move along.

No it doesn't.

[Truth_Quark]

The GPL does not require you to publicize changes, but it does require you to relinquish the source code if somebody asks.

It does not such thing. It requires you to relinquish the source code if you distribute the application

Your internal tools and documents if someone decides that these are a program are completely yours untill you sell them to another party.

Re:No it doesn't.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

If fact, that is if you distribte the application as binary only. If you distribute with sourcecode in the first place, you are already covered, and you don't have to deal with people who ask for the sourcecode.

Thank you

[Mr. Underbridge]

when you distribute a document you are ipso fatso distributing the source (or everything you need to "compile and run" the document.)

Seems like a lot of people around here are too dense to grasp the obvious. Unless it's latex, there *isn't* source for a document. Even then there's no sort of "releasing secrets" angle unless you put company secrets in your LaTeX comments.

Proverbial mountain and molehill here, people.

Uhh, I don't think so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone no doubt has already pointed this out but the font simply displays the information I encode in my particular language. Is it the case then that all the information stored in my opensource GPL'd database is also freely transferable?

I think not.

What about gimp?

[neopara]

Isn't this like saying images that I make in gimp are gpl? Granted the program must purchase the copyright to use the image format (ala gif), but the user doesn't. That is why when I use multiple graphics programs they each pay the license to use gif. Otherwise, I should be able to pay for one gif license and use it in multiple programs.

Re:Presentation

[dfghjk]

You mean when you compile a Metafont document. TeX is not involved with font creation.

Mod that up insightful!

[Chuck Chunder]

The article blithely states:

Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL.

but, simply stated, that is catagorically 100% untrue. As the parent to this post suggests the GPL and GPL'd items have no such power to automatically GPL anything. If you unknowingly (or even intentionally) use a GPL'd item in a way that you are not allowed then you have simply violated copyright on that item.

If it did emerge as a problem you may choose to resolve it by GPLing your stuff but that is by no means the only way. The parts of your work that are entirely your own creation (ie the text) are not a derived work of the font even if the compound document is.

Personally I'd be happy to operate in the belief that a reasonable interpretation of the GPL allows me to use the font like that and if it became an issue (which could only happen if the fonts copyright holder decided it was an issue) I'd just use another font. It is difficult to see how there would be any real cause for damage from my use of the font in the meantime.

Of course I've more or less just reiterated what the parent poster said.....but that's because he's so right :)

what about proprietary fonts? GPL is irrelevant!

[commodoresloat]

The GPL is in fact less restrictive than normal copyright law. By this logic, it seems that all documents that use proprietary fonts would not be allowed to be redistributed at all. GPL is not the issue at all; the only issue is messed-up IP law surrounding fonts and a hypothetical scenario dreamed up by someone with too much imagination. As the parent to this post points out, it is highly unlikely that any actual font author wants to use his or her ownership of a font to prevent users from distributing documents using that font. This entire story is pure FUD.

Why only fonts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this like saying that anything written with Emacs is subject to the GPL? Aren't fonts just another component of an operating system?

Geneva? New York? Remember them?

[argent]

Apple Geneva, the Helvetica take-off? All the other Apple "city" fonts? All the versions of Courier, Letter Gothic, and of course Helvetica again and again and again?

The appearance of fonts can not be copyrighted in the US, which means in practice they can't be copyrighted. That's why there's lookalike fonts all over the place.

I call FUD.

The sky is falling again

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure that you can't say you own a doc because of the font.
This topic is FUD

-1 Load of Bullshit

[lahvak]

I wish there was that moderation category, because that's what the parent is.

GPL does not require you to "release the source code to anyone that asked for it". It requires you to distribute source code with your binaries. Only the people who got the binaries legaly have right to ask you for the source code. Of course they can then distribute it further.

It is also not true that "ase you may charge a nominal fee, but the fee can be no more than the cost of physical media or transfer fees such as paper, blank CDs or DVDs, postage if applicable, and the like". You can sell GPL licensed software if you want to, for any price you want to ask. But you have to include the source, and your customers have the right to distribute the software and its modification further, and even charge for it.

But anyway, if your internal software leaked out somehow, it wouldn't be consideted legal distribution, so you would not be required to distribute the source.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It MEANT it to be viral so that everything 'must be free' and remove rights from the users of the code.

The GPL doesn't remove any rights. It adds one right: the right to view all modified source. Plain and simple.

If this were a typewriter ...

[gstoddart]

Or a pen. Or makers. Or paint. This would be a complete non-issue because how the heck can the medium hold license or copyright to the final result?

I should think that the entire point of providing the font was so people could have access to fonts more freely. Adobe doesn't claim copyright on Photoshop work. Tomcat doesn't lay claim to my web-pages.

There has to be a reasonable expectation of actually using the font for the purposes which it was intended.

Uncopyrightable

[Kaenneth]

Fonts are basically not Copyrightable.

You can trademark their names, patent processes for manipulating them, but you cannot sue someone over the shape of their letters.

That's why McDonald's logo is 'The Golden Arches', instead of 'The Big Yellow 'M''

Clearly rubbish

[BlackMagi]

This is clearly ridiculous. The GPL protects people selling derived IP, not things produced with GPL licensed tools. If you sell a document, you are not profiting by selling the font or any derivative of that font. Any suggestion that you are is like suggesting you can't write a commercial web page which is served by apache. Clearly this is just a stupid ploy by people who like to overstate the reach of the GPL.

WARNING: You may be tricked into being free!

[merc]

That's right, beware! Those lovers of liberty are at it again! It's there, sneaking behind the corner, just waiting to haul you away into the horrible grasps of freedom. Liberty and justice will be heaped up on the masses without their consent! You have all been warned!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled FUD.

Compiler ?

[aepervius]

Does using a GPLed compiler make your executable GPL ed ? Does using a GPLed painrt program make your work GPL ed ? Does using a GPLed File System make all bit inside GPLed ? If no, why in the heck using a GPLed font make your document [the word and CONTENT of thereof] GPLed ?? You do not modify the font, you just use it. AT worst you should be forced to provide the source code (vector or whatever the font are done today). But certainly not any content unrelated to the font. If yes, the document is trully GPLed, then despite being an open source supporter I say "TRULY MS is right, GPL is a freaking viral licence" !

GPL fonts exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I find these GPL'd fonts? Are any of them any good? I was under the impression that Bitstream Vera was about as free as fonts got these days.

Egregious misreading of the GPL

[jc42]

Using GPL'd stuff doesn't force you to distribute anything to anyone. It just says that if you do distribute to someone, and they ask to see the source, you have to give it to them (or tell them where they can find it).

So if you send me a document that uses the GPL'd fonts, and I tell you that I don't have those fonts, you have to either give me a copy of the fonts or tell me where I can download them.

I'd think that we'd want this for any font. I mean, why would you use a font if you don't want recipients of your docs to be able to use the font? That seems dumb.

Of course, we'd expect a bit of FUD from people who are pushing proprietary fonts. They'd like people to use them, so that recipients of document will pay for the fonts.

Or maybe not. After all, you can still read the doc if you replace a missing font with Courier or Times Roman or Helvetica, right? If that's not what it looked like on the sender's screen, well, that's their problem for not using a freely-available font.

But where do people get the idea that using something that's GPL'd forces you to give your stuff to anyone? There's no language even vaguely like that in the GPL.

Nope. No way.

[Enahs]

I could see having to release a PDF under the GPL if I embed the fonts, but that's about the only way.

What are the legal implications of embedding commercial fonts in a document, anyway?

Something like a Scribus document, though, uh-uh, hell no. I'm looking at one of my Scribus documents right now (yes, real people actually use Scribus) and I find no fonts in there. I find references to fonts, but no fonts.

Here, here's a snippet from one of my documents. This is from a style:

<STYLE EFFECT="0" SCOLOR="Black" ALIGN="0" BASE="0" LINESP="16" VOR="0" DROPLIN="2" FSHADE="40" NACH="0" SSHADE="100" FIRST="0" INDENT="0" FONTSIZE="10" NAME="Serving" FCOLOR="DarkCyan" TABS="" NUMTAB="0" DROP="0" FONT="Arial Italic" />

I'll be damned if I'm releasing my document under Microsoft's Webfont EULA, by the way.

If I used GPLed fonts in this document, and the person on the other end had those fonts, then Scribus would use those fonts. If they didn't have those fonts, they'd be prompted to substitute the fonts. Sure, there'd be problems with text flow and what have you, but it's not as if the theoretical GPLed font is necessary.

Unless we're talking about embedding fonts, this is a bit like claiming that Wired content is GPLed because they talk about Linux on occasion. It's preposterous and anyone with more than a functioning brainstem should be able to figure this out without ever consulting a lawyer.

work of art vs. technical document?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Let's see. The samplers for a font or a typeface can be copyrighted. Fonts themselves can be copyrighted. But typefaces are closer to algorithms and therefore should be patented, as long as we are patenting algorithms now.

A document is not a font and it is not a sampler, although it may contain all the characters in the font or the sampler. I'd suspect that if this question had come up twenty or forty or a hundred fifty years ago (It did, I think.) the judge would say that the document was derived from the font or the sampler if it was intended to display the characters from the font for artistic purposes.

Otherwise, while it would be incorporating the font, it would be incorporating motifs and elements from the copyrighted work rather than the work itself. I think the fair use clauses are where this sort of thing would have to be decided. Otherwise, Paul Simon could claim the right to prevent people from saying, "The Bible's old." or "The greatest story ever told." with a certain inflection and emphasis. (He wouldn't, of course. He's a true artist.)

I don't remember whether the court cases determined that the author of the font could license the font in such a way that the mere use of the font in a published work would require a license from the font foundry to _distribute_ (as opposed to needing the license to print) the work. I vaguely remember some foundries claiming such a thing.

But I see serious problems with the fair-use clauses if a person who owned the copyright for a font were allowed to indirectly claim copyright on documents printed in that font. These problems would exist entirely indepently of the GPL issues.

Let's pretend there is a definite GPL problem...

[planetoid]

And I use GPL fonts in a document without releasing the sources to my document and yada-yada-yada. What are the GNU people going to do about it? Call the police?

Wrong on Three Counts

[tjstork]

This argument is wrong on three counts:

a) Presentation is information. Font, placement, color, all of these "superflous" things, matter and are often just as important as the text being decorated by them.

b) It is incorrect to assume that a program which uses libraries is somehow different from a document which uses fonts. A program is merely a presentation of its underlying libraries, and a word processing document is an as assembly of its components.

c) The creators of the fonts are entitled to the same rights as the creators of an operating system. They spend many many hours working on them. If an operating system or c compiler provider can get you to sign onto their licensing scheme, so too can the creator of the font.

Incidentally, all of the above applies to images, sounds, or any other sort of intellectual property. Yes, a creator of an icon could release it GPL, or even more pervasive. For example, a web server that uses somebodies images might be required to divulge its source.

Question #1: What is the Remedy?

[rewinn]

As a money-grubbing piggie who thoroughly supports the right of anybody to give away their stuff using the GPL or by any other means they see fit .... let me suggest we be practical.

In any civil legal issue, the first practical question to ask about a possible violation of an agreement (such as the GPL) is "what is the remedy?"

Suppose VileWare Inc used the GPL'd software "gplGameEngine" as the basis of its megahit MMORPG UItimateGplViolatorOnline & distributed it in violation of the GPL, making $1 Gazillion before the courts blew the "TimeOut!" What is the remedy?

• VileWare has to replace gplGameEngine with something else. The courts won't care what they replace it with, but VileWare will want something with equivalent functionality so that they stay in business. This is probably going to be expensive - otherwise why did they ripoff gplGameEngine in the first place?
• VileWare has to pay damages to the software author they ripped off; this is probably the reasonable licensing fee for gplGameEngine, or the % of VileGame's profits reasonably attributable to gplGameEngine. (This is a fact-laden determination that might result, fairly, in a *lot* of money; the better gplGameEngine works, the more expensive this part of the remedy gets, and VileWare's own malfeasance is an endorsement of the product!)

These reasonable remedies can make the GPL an effective club for limiting VileWare's use of gplGameEngine to whatever the work's author freely gave away.

In contrast: Suppose VileWare used the GPL'd font "gplTimesNewRoman" for the game manual (printed and/or online), somehow violating the GPL in the use of the font. What's the remedy?

• Use Another Font. The is not going to be expensive, because few if any GPL'd fonts have massive functionality advantages over numerous PD fonts.
• Fork over either the reasonable licensing fee for gplTimesNewRoman or the % of VileGame's profit reasonably attributable to the use of that font. I humbly suggest that this is not going to be a lot of money; reasonable font licensing fees are small and the contribution of a user manual's font to the desirability of an MMORPG is also small.

Under the above analysis, I suggest that trying to use the GPL to limit the use of the font to format documents is not well advised. (The use of the GPL to limit the sale of the font, is, of course, an entirely different matter.) As always, Your Lawyering May Vary!

fonts not distributed with documents

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, Fonts are not part of most document formats- meaning that the documents themselves are not GPL'ed. If you simply reference a font in a document, its akin to linking to another web page, or referring to another style sheet on another web site. It does not imply that the content that was GPL'ed is included in your document.

Re:Not, is, is not, is so....

[curtoid]

It's really like saying that since you "compiled" your code with GCC, the resulting program is subject to the GPL, which it isn't.

Aaah, somebody with more than 2 braincells-GPL 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

"For instance, what if I create a web application and I use GPL software? If I allow people outside of my company access to the website, do I have to make the modified source or the source to my application available? To an inexperienced person, it might seem to be the case, since the GPL simply talks about "distribution" but fails to mention what distribution means. It is obvious, however, that it means for me to sell or ultimately to give you a copy of the program in binary form."

You must have been out of town when this story was posted.

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/08/ 2148207&tid=98&tid=106

GPL - Great Possibilites Lie ahead in

[Anonymous Coward]

Great Possibilites Lie ahead in putting GPL licenses everywhere, so that in 10 years FOSS entities can sue just about anyone and have a credible case.

Sniff Test

[mcrbids]

Well, this thread is aging, so my chances at mod points are pretty slim - oh well.

The problem here, is, that this doesn't pass the "sniff test". In other words, does it smell right, a bit off, or way out there?

If the idea of problems with GPL fonts commandeering works printed with them was a gallon of milk, I'd expect to see lumps of greenish goo.

It doesn't pass the sniff test. At all.

It's like those people you'll hear of from time-to-time who say that all you have to do is file XYZ papers with the IRS so that you are a "State Citizen" or a "US Citizen", thus making you exempt from the IRS taxes. Never mind all those in jail doing time for tax evasion. Just file this paper, pay me $2,000, and have a nice day....

Sorry, I'm not buying it. I'll print what I feel I want to, in whatever editor I feel like, on whatever printer I desire, and I'll rightfully retain my rights on whatever I printed. I won't pirate that word processor, either. (Nor the O/S running on the machine, or the printer driver... you get the idea)

Good luck with your GPL fonts.

Re:Presensation: Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone with mod points mod the parent up, that's the right idea. Most document formats only reference the font they use by name. Although there might be weird ownership implications upon printouts, public presentations, and formats that embed fonts (like pdf), most files do not have this problem.

Of course, ianal...

To all you GPL advocates

[Brandybuck]

To all you GPL advocates out there: go stick your head in a toilet and flush! This may indeed be the last straw. This may the one legal inanity out of hundreds of legal inanities that causes me to wilfully and deliberately violate the GPL with glee.

As far back as I can remember GPL advocates have deliberately incited controversy after controversy in a lame attempt at social engineering. First it was about Apple not being able to write a front end to GCC. Then KDE was illegal because Qt wasn't free. Then Corel LinuxOS was breaking the law because it had a closed beta test. Last month the debian-legal list declared Cervisia to be non-free software despite it's FSF approved license. Now I can't give my friend a PDF if he asks for one without having to go through the hassle of hunting down the raw sources for the fonts I used.

Screw that! A document is not a derivative work of its fonts! Only someone with their head up the GPL's ass could possibly think that these inane controversies promote freedom. They do the opposite because they drive people AWAY from free software. The Free Software community has a reputation, and because of you, it's not a good one.

Re:To all you GPL advocates

[wolftone]

This may indeed be the last straw. This may the one legal inanity out of hundreds of legal inanities that causes me to wilfully and deliberately violate the GPL with glee.

First off, if you do deliberately violate the GPL, I would hope that you do so publicly so that we can finally test its validity in a public arena. If you don't, then your chickenshit cowardice would hopefully find a way to catch up to you.

More on topic, though, you are right when you say that a document is not a derivative work of its fonts. The poor sap who wrote the post to the scribus mailing list has obviously not read the GPL. The "GPL advocates" you refer to bring up these controversies in order to protect *their* freedoms and the benefits granted by those freedoms. The controversies are turned into Slashdot flamewars, are a big deal for a little while, and mellow out.

Not all of us who are GPL advocates are also zealots, and you make yourself look like an idiot for confusing them.

Re:To all you GPL advocates

[10Ghz]

This may the one legal inanity out of hundreds of legal inanities that causes me to wilfully and deliberately violate the GPL with glee.

So, because you don't like the license, you feel that you have the right to ignore the rights of the copyright-holders? You believe that people should not have the right to license their work as they like? Or do you think that they should only be allowed to license them in a way you accept (and that propably means BSD-license)?

If you really believe that, then you sir are a Grade A asshat.

This whole thing stems from a legal oversight no-one even thought of. I'm pretty sure that the creators of GPL didn't intent to use it with fonts and documents created with those fonts. And it's even debatable that does the GPL-restrictions even apply in case like this. But you can take comfort in the fact that your hatred for the GPL has been noted. Not that your opinion matters one bit, but still.

But if I ever write any software, I'll release it under the GPL. Just to piss off assholes like you.

Re:To all you GPL advocates

[soulhuntre]

So, because you don't like the license, you feel that you have the right to ignore the rights of the copyright-holders?

Hey, it works for most of the MP3 stealing, movie downloading P2P crowd.

Re:To all you GPL advocates

[Brandybuck]

It's my fault you missed my point, because my anger distracted you. But I didn't mean to say I was going to ignore the rights of any copyright holders. Instead I'm seriously thinking about ignoring all the myriad *interpretations* out there regarding the GPL, and rely on my own reading of it and copyright law to guide me. Life is too short to wait for the debian-legal mailing list to tell me how to live it.

Re:To all you GPL advocates

[Brandybuck]

Not all of us who are GPL advocates are also zealots

Then you non-zealot advocates need to speak up, because you're getting drowned out in the cacaphony of violation accusations.

Re:Aaah, somebody with more than 2 braincells-GPL

[borgheron]

No, I wasn't. I was referring to how the current GPL 2.0 operates. Not to things which are merely being considered for GPL 3.0. ./ is so full of FUD these days, it's almost funny. :)

GJC

Blown out of proportion

[borgheron]

This whole thing is just blown way out of proportion. I have to read the email list and laugh at the guy who said I don't want to make this more than it is.

I would be suprised if we don't here some clarification on this soon. But I believe that what was said on the mailing list was an eggregiously wrong interpretation of the license.

GJC

Big deal, even if true... where's the harm??

[borgheron]

According to the GPL, you must make the source code available to the people you distribute it to. Well, if your giving someone your document doesn't this mean you're also giving them the code as well?? :)

So what does it matter? You're not being forced to make it available to the entire world, only to those you send your document to.

But, I believe, for reasons I've spelled out in other postings here... which will not be repeated... that the idea is ludicrous anyway. But even if it is true... where's the harm?

GJC

Nonsense

[GCP]

Unlike the GPL, Microsoft technology licenses are not viral. You pay for the right to use them in your own proprietary works. You can statically link MFC into your own Windows app without losing ownership of the resulting app to MS. You just don't own MFC. You can use MS fonts as you like, as long as you have a valid license, and any document you embed them in is still yours. (The FONT isn't yours, but you have some redistribution rights that you paid for.)

Crying "FUD!" or some anti-MS nonsense may pass for logical argument among GPL True Believers, but for others there are issues of substance to consider when basing commercial work on technologies with viral licenses.

And I say that as someone who uses GPL, non-viral Open Source (such as BSD, Apache, etc.), and commercial licenses for both commercial and personal work. I love some of my GPL'ed tools, and I acknowledge some possibility that I might not have had them if not for the viral nature of the GPL. Even so, there are times when, if you want to be "Free", you're better off paying for your own lunch than accepting a free one with strings attached.

and yet, it's still just a damn font.

[Anonymous Coward]

But continue slapping perfume on shit if you like.

No it doesn't

[jonbryce]

In the US, fonts are not copyrightable. Only "font software" is copyrightable.

Elsewhere, fonts themselves are copyrightable, but once they are used in a document, the copyright holder of the font has no rights to royalties etc in respect of them.

Dobule No

[Anonymous Coward]

It was about control data within the one document.
Your iso-9660 example is just the .zip file revisited.

HTML can solve this

[CarpetShark]

It seems to me that HTML's font specification system solves this problem nicely. If more apps specified fonts as "GPL Sans, Arial, Helvetica, sans serif", rather than actually including them in the document, this wouldn't be a problem, and would in fact introduce more flexibility and smaller file sizes.

Of course, for printers etc. who may need the exact font the designer used, you would need some sort of 'render integrity' indicator, which shows how many fonts have been substituted.

Maybe with SVG etc., we'll begin to see more apps doing this. Personally, I think it's important that fonts are modifiable and open, so I'm still in favour of the GPL for fonts, if this one problem can be worked around somehow.

Definition of Font

[CarpetShark]

A font is the computer file or program that is used to represent or create the typeface.

Hmm... I was under the impression that a font was a typeface that included size information, and perhaps weight etc.

Re:Definition of Font

[neillewis]

A font (or fount) was traditionally a set of cast metal type of a particular style and size. A typeface is the design or set of designs used to make those fonts.

Re:Big deal, even if true... where's the harm??

[Zey]

According to the GPL, you must make the source code available to the people you distribute it to. Well, if your giving someone your document doesn't this mean you're also giving them the code as well?? :)

The equivalent would be someone using Perl to write a report. The output data you produce with it is not GNU. Only the code used to produce Perl is GNU.

Someone uses a GNU font to produce a document. The code that makes the font is GNU. The output isn't. Your document's safe.

18 days after April Fools and people just can't let it go...

GPL does not require release to the world

[fremar]

The GPL says that you should make a copy of the source available TO EVERYONE WHO RECEIVES THE BINARY. Not to the whole world. So if the document is for internal circulation, the source is for internal circulation too. Two more notes: 1. What is source and what is binary for a document? I guess you could say that the .doc or .ppt is the source, and a .pdf created from it is the binary. So you could have some problem if you distribute the pdf file so noone can change the document, then the GPL would claim that you releade the .doc as well. 2. FUD anyone???

Separating the font from the document

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, how about making a utility that will extract the 'font' from the 'document' ?

That way, anyone who gets the document and wants the font (to use for their own purposes) should be able to pull it out.

And anyone who has got the font 'executable' that way can then ask the document author for the font 'source', as is their GPL right.

Should keep everyone happy; the reputation of the font author/giver is maintained; and the document can be used as the document's author intends.

Just use indirection...

[John Allsup]

Set styles to use some random font, write the document, implement the styles using the GPL fonts then release the result as GPL. Release the 'source' document with stylesheets that use other fonts. The tell people to LGPL their fonts rather than GPL them: this ought to fix the problem.

and?

[jnf]

Seriously, the gpl only states that you must distribute the source to people you distribute the application too, so its of 0 concern to internal company documents. I mean seriously, if the email made it out of the corporate realm then there was another problem, and anyone else who see's it was probably supposed to.

Use, or embed?

[Millennium]

After looking at the font exception they mentioned, it looks to me as though this only applies if you embed the font in your document. Simply using the font doesn't trigger the source requirement, and the exemption would mean that embedding the font doesn't trigger the requirement either.

That's totally bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The license of the font I use has nothing do to with the license of my document.

I can use a GPL font or a font from Microsoft, that has absolutely no legal effect on the work that i do. I can release my document under GPL, creative commons or whatever license i choose.

Some background on Font Licensing

[yosch]

Font licensing is a very complex issue.

These recent research reports on Writing Systems Implementation provide very good information and links on the subject

Font Licensing and Protection Details and Intellectual Property Concerns in the Development of Complex Script and Language Resources

This is part of UNESCO's Initiative Babel

content vs medium vs presentation

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit

so

if I send email using open src tools the contents are gpl?

Microsoft owns all the docs written on my system?

How about code and change the font to an MS font it is owned by Microsoft?

GPL this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates is reading this article and laughing his ass off.

Children, grow up.

[feargal]

Letter of the law, spirit of the law.

Next!

GPL isn't opensource

[jevring]

GPL is, in my opinion, not a true open-source license.
sure, it lets you llook at the source code for a certain program, but that's where the openness stops.
It's absolutely horrid to require someone who used you, supposedly, open sourcecode to re-publish anything he or she has done with it.
And it becauses inescapably clear in this case that the GPL isn't as good a license as people are lead to believe.
To me, the only REALLY open license is the BSd license, and other licenses that affort the same, or more, freedoms, but that doesn't impose restrictions on the user.

Re:GPL isn't opensource

[EzInKy]

GPL is, in my opinion, not a true open-source license. sure, it lets you llook at the source code for a certain program, but that's where the openness stops. It's absolutely horrid to require someone who used you, supposedly, open sourcecode to re-publish anything he or she has done with it.

There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from using GPL'd software to create proprietory works. As a matter of fact the GPL clearly states it does not cover mere use. As for copying, the GPL grants developers rights rarely found in closed source software.

Fonts aren't copyrightable

[shimmin]

But I thought, much to the chagrin of Adobe et pals, that U.S. Courts had repeatedly denied font copyrightability. While fonts are often patented, and the code used to generate the letters can be copyrighted, the letterforms themselves are not copyrighted. And if no copyright resides in the letters, the GPL is toothless, isn't it?

what the f...

[namekuseijin]

"internal corporate communications"

you're aware that when for your private usage only, the GPL doesn't demand that you share your personal modifications to the code with the rest of the world, aren't you?

what's the big deal, then?

Re:Big deal, even if true... where's the harm??

[borgheron]

Actually I know that it doesn't affect the document. I was playing devils advocate here.

GJC

Why Fonts Cannot Be Copyrighted

[GogglesPisano]

Fonts can't be copyrighted (at least, they can't in the US). Seems like the same argument could be made against Copyleft:

http://www.totse.com/en/law/justice_for_all/sf-leg al.html/

Re:Why Fonts Cannot Be Copyrighted

[dr.badass]

Fonts can't be copyrighted (at least, they can't in the US). Seems like the same argument could be made against Copyleft:

Indeed, but it's weirder than that.

The confusion basically stems from the fact that the law takes something that in all ways resembles intellectual property, and instead treats it like physical property. Imagine if a written story were treated as entirely dependent on the page it was printed on. If you photocopied the page, the author would have no rights over your copy at all. (This is why copyright exists in the first place!)

Basically, while you can't copyright a typeface, it is still your property, and you still can dictate terms to the people you sell it to.

I can sell you a car on the condition that you not sell it to anyone else. If you do, I can sue you for breaking our contract. However, I can't sue the person you sold it to if he sells it, because the car is no longer mine. I have no rights over the car once it leaves my ownership.

This works in the physical world because you can't simply "copy and paste" a car to have 2 cars.

The (flawed) idea behind the US interpretation is that if type could be copyrighted, then type makers could wield those rights over users of that type. If you designed the type that a book used, and didn't like what the book was about, you could demand that they stop using your type. (It is exactly the same fear being instilled in this article.)

This make logical sense in a vacuum (like Congress), but is completely at odds with the way type has always worked before, and continues to work in other countries. It's purely a hypothetical situation, and one that could be prevented by some means other than completely excluding typefaces from copyright protections.

It's also worth noting that the non-copyrightability of type in the US is widely opposed. It isn't the first time the US has been stupid about IP rights.

Flames

[Catskul]

You couldn't print Trade Secrets in a font that is GPL'ed, as it would inheriently have more limitations added to it that the GPL doesn't allow.

You're right... in fact, I remeber trying this once and the document burst into flames when I tried to print it.

Bad example.

[mpe]

There are a lot of consequences here, such as internal corporate communications.

This is probably the worst possible example. Since there is only one party, the corporation in question, involved here. The GPL would only be any kind of an issue here in the case of external communications.

It appears to make the use of GPL fonts undesirable in almost any document.

It is also relevent if the document is electronic or printed...

To all you GPL advocates-Violate freely.

[Anonymous Coward]

"First off, if you do deliberately violate the GPL, I would hope that you do so publicly so that we can finally test its validity in a public arena. If you don't, then your chickenshit cowardice would hopefully find a way to catch up to you."

Why should he? Illegal P2P downloaders with their encrypted communications, and geo-thwarfting protocals certainly don't show the same curtesy to the content providers they rip off. Why should the GPL get special treatment?

To all you GPL advocates-Violate freely

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, because you don't like the license, you feel that you have the right to ignore the rights of the copyright-holders? You believe that people should not have the right to license their work as they like? Or do you think that they should only be allowed to license them in a way you accept (and that propably means BSD-license)?"

And yet all the "information wants to be free" advocates see no problem with violating the "license" on the content they distribute widely.

"This whole thing stems from a legal oversight no-one even thought of. I'm pretty sure that the creators of GPL didn't intent to use it with fonts and documents created with those fonts. And it's even debatable that does the GPL-restrictions even apply in case like this. But you can take comfort in the fact that your hatred for the GPL has been noted. Not that your opinion matters one bit, but still."

That's the problem with the GPL. Your attempt at aggresive social engineering, means that you have to go back time, and again, to fix the collateral damage. e.g. yacc, web services fonts, etc such a policy encourages.

"But if I ever write any software, I'll release it under the GPL. Just to piss off assholes like you."

Your not hurting US. You even "borrow" code from the BSD side of things, so we are already fully validated...and we don't have to keep reclausing our license.

I don't get it

[BRSloth]

The GPL says that, if you release your program, the source must come with it. If you release a document, that is something not compiled, you are, actually, releasing the source of it.

Also, nothing says that, once you put something under the GPL you must release it over the internet. If you write a program to one company, you can still release it under the GPL, and that means that you must send the company the program and its sources. I DO NOT need to release it also in the internet, to everyone.

There are good printing fonts...

[Grendel Drago]

For printing, there's Computer Modern (now available in Unicode!) and Gentium. Neither of these are precisely public domain, but neither has any usage restrictions on them. Not to mention that both are really, really pretty.

Or were you talking about display fonts? Whole different ball of wax, that.

--grendel drago

I didn't consider embedding when I chose a license

[Beltway Prophet]

I made lots of bitmap fonts on the Amiga, but I've only made one complete vector font. It's a lot of work!

I put the font I made under the Open Publication License. I wanted it to be available, but I wanted to keep my name attached to it and to hear about it if people changed it. After spending several of my weekends putting it together, I thought that was fair.

Here's the heart of it:

1) The modified version must be labeled as such.

2) The person making the modifications must be identified and the modifications dated.

3) Acknowledgement of the original author and publisher if applicable must be retained according to normal academic citation practices.

4) The location of the original unmodified document must be identified.

5) The original author's (or authors') name(s) may not be used to assert or imply endorsement of the resulting document without the original author's (or authors') permission.

I didn't consider document embedding of the font at the time, though, and while this isn't a font many people would ever use (it's kind of demented looking: http://whiteshell.com/fonts/beltway-prophet), I don't want to limit people who might consider it, so it looks like I'll have to change my choice of license...any suggestions?

Help Me! I Just Painted My House!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the makers of the paint have the copyright on my house!

Re:What is GPL'd? The font or the text?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that TT and PS fonnts are code and can be copyrighted. Sure, you could write your own PS font equivelent to a GPLed font's face and bypass this stupidity, but 99.9999999999999% of people are just going to slap that "free" GPLed PS font into their document and then they will be in trouble!

Re:I hate the term "FUD"

[Tim C]

For what it's worth (ie nothing) I tend to agree with you. FUD is the new troll - a term to be thrown at anyone you disagree with.

No-one seems to stop to think that perhaps the person they're responding to could just be wrong.

[OFF TOPIC] IANAL = WTF?

[doom]

Not a lawyer. Don't take my advice.

Thanks. But even if you were a lawyer I probably still wouldn't take your advice. You're not my lawyer, and even if you were, I'd probably still think twice before assuming you knew what you were talking about.

What is it with all of the "IANAL" disclaimers? Myself, I don't really expect that there's a bunch of lawyers around handing out legal opinons for free on the net. Is everyone under the impression that you can get arrested for misrepresentation if you talk about the law without a legal degree?

This is pure bollocks.

[mellon]

Give me a break. A document is just data. You can use a program to render it as printable output. The output is just as much covered by the GPL as an image on your screen of a GPL'd program that you're running. The data in the file is just as much covered by the GPL as some source code that you ran through the GNU C compiler is. It's just like saying "you generated this output using groff, so the source from which the output was generated is now covered by the GPL." It's completely ridiculous.

I don't know who came up with this insane idea, but it sounds like FUD from someone whose profit margins are threatened by Open Source software.

Misinterpretation...

[rew]

In the INTERPRETATION of the normal GPL someone decided that "derived work" would include linked-binaries. Even if say you just included a verbatim copy of a certain GPL library function.

The intent of GPL is that you get the source, and are free to modify the source. If you do so, and distribute the result, you also get to distribute your modifications to the original source.

In the case of the font, do you use the source of the font to modify it a little bit, and distribute the results?

If you write a spreadsheet using gnumeric, does the spreadsheet become GPL? Ah, it's a separate file? but what if you print-to-ps an extract of the spreadsheet and intend to distribute that? (but not your formulas). Now your spreadsheet is sort of "linked" with the GPL stuff from gnumeric into one file. Is the separate "source" (your spreadsheet) suddenly "derived" from the gnumeric source? Come on!

What prompted the GPL was that the BSD licence allowed SUN and DEC to take BSD, fix bugs, and then sell the result. This meant that they both had to fix the same bugs separately from the "open source" people. This is a waste of time. DEC and SUN clearly had a "derived" product.

If I make a program that does something, but requires say a CRC32. I can find a GPL CRC32 source on the internet, and I'd argue that as long as I don't modify a byte in the crc32.c file, my whole directory with sources isn't suddenly a derived work of the crc32.c that I got from the internet. Similarly, if I compile it and happen to statically link the binary, all of my sources are not suddenly derived from the crc32.c I found on the internet. Now the binary still DOES contain GPL stuff. So I get to provide the LICENCE file with my software, and I need to make the crc32.c source available to anyone who asks.

Suppose I write proprietary software. Suppose I distribute it on a CD, and I decide to put a small GPL utility on the CD as well. These two are "linked" on the cd.img.iso image, right? Suddenly my million lines of code are "derived" from that simple GPL utility source code? Get reasonable!

Of course people buying the CD get the right to the source of the utility.

Of course people getting a "linked" version of your document with GPL fonts get the right to the source of the GPL font. But they don't automatically get the right to publish (modified or not) versions of your document.