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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.
While I would like to see clarification, this seems like an attack on the GPL...
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
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?
So if I encrypt using GPG, does that mean all my e-mails are covered by the GPL? Yikes.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
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.
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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.
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
"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.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
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.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
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
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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."
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.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
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.
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.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
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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.
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.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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.
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
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
"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."
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You must have been out of town when this story was posted.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/08
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
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
As a recipient of said document, you're free to redistribute it to whomever you please.
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.