Slashdot Mirror
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.
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)
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
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
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.
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
I am trolling
GPG doesn't include a copy of itself inside your emails. Embedded fonts do.
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.
RST
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.
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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:
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.
I am not a lawyer. Go see one if you need advice.
... and copy and distribute such modifications ..." (Paragraph 2).
... provided that you also do one of the following...."
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
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
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.
Complete and utter rubbish. The font FAQ to which you linked even agrees:
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...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
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.
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?
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.
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
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, 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.
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.
AccountKiller
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fonts-faq/part2/
"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.
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?