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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.
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.
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.