It looks to me like the GUST fokes did their best, but they're not a big company, so they ignored some legal aspects. Rather than telling them they're about to get blacklisted, perhaps a more constructive approach is in order. Below are the copyright messages included with (i) Nimubus No.9 Regular 1.06 in Type 1 format, as shipped by Fedora 9, and (ii) TeX Gyre Termes Regular 1.011, which is derived from Nimbus, also currently shipped by Fedora: <Nimbus copyright> Copyright \050URW\051++,Copyright 1999 by \050URW\051++ Design & Development; Cyrillic glyphs added by Valek Filippov \050C\051 2001-2005 </Nimbus copyright> <Termes copyright> Copyright (URW)++, copyright 1999 by (URW)++ Design & Development; Cyrillic glyphs added by Valek Filippov, copyright 2001-2002; Vietnamese characters were added by Han The Thanh; copyright 2006, 2008 for TeX Gyre extensions by B. Jackowski and J.M. Nowacki (on behalf of TeX users groups). This work is released under the GUST Font License -- see http://tug.org/fonts/licenses/GUST-FONT-LICENSE.txt for details. </Termes copyright> As you can see, there is no attempt to missattribute the work. The only trouble is that GUST attempted to relicense the work under more liberal terms, from GPL to LPPL/GUST. IMHO, the way is to convince URW and the two individual contributors (Valek Filippov and Han The Thanh) to agree to relicense their work under a license more appropriate for fonts. Perhaps Tom can suggest what the best license is. It seem that GUST had trouble hearing back from URW. Perhaps some company with more legal clout should offer some help. After all, URW cannot financially benefit from GPL'd fonts that have been hacked by the FOSS community for a decade, so my guess is that URW saw this relicensing matter as just not worth their time. Also, when URW released the fonts, people weren't aware as they are today of the legal implications of GPL for fonts... Hope this helps, Vasile 2008/7/26 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx>: > Hi, > > I'm afraid these answers are utterly unconvincing. I've just checked > Debian made the very same analysis as us, and you're on your way to get > yourself blacklisted in all major Linux distributions. > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-extra/+bug/135911/comments/3 > > In case that's not clear enough, you have a problem. > > On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 12:48 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote: >> Jonathan Underwood wrote: >> > Dear Hans, >> > >> > Some legal concerns have arisen regarding the licensing of the TeX >> > Gyre fonts - please see >> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456580. In particular, >> > this part is most relevant: >> > >> > 2. The textlive-texfm includes tex-gyre fonts. As the authors freely >> > admit they lifted the GNU Ghostscript GPL fonts, changed their format, >> > modified the result, >> > and relicensed it all under their own license [1]. They don't list any >> > authorization for this from the previous rights holders in their >> > package. Since we can not ship the GPL bits they lifted under another >> > license, and we can not ship the bits they added under the GPL without >> > tex-gyre people authorization, the whole thing is un-distributable and >> > must be removed [2] >> > >> > [1] page 8 of http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/afp05.pdf >> > [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2008-July/msg00111.html >> > >> > I wonder if you would take a few moments to look at this and comment >> > on the correctness of the analysis and help to resolve these issues? I >> > am sure you'd agree with me that resolving this is important for the >> > TeX Gyre project, and free software fonts in general. >> > >> > Finally, in case it's not clear, I'd just like to point out that I am >> > *not* contacting you in my capacity as chair of the UKTUG funding >> > sub-committee in this instance, but as a member of UKTUG, and also a >> > Fedora contributor. Nonetheless, as a UKTUG member I would not be >> > happy to think that UKTUG is financially supporting a project which is >> > in violation of the GPL, if that is indeed the case. >> >> a short reply (i have to catch up many mails after the tug conference) >> >> - the gust font licence is mostly the lppl licence which is accepted as ok > > Irrelevant. We are not complaining about the Gust font license we are > complaining about re-licensing without previuous authors authorization. > >> - the main 'additions' concern packaging (file names, internal font >> names, etc. since any simple replacement/extension can mess up doc >> production and could put a stress on user group support), which is an >> important issue for tex distributions > > That's still a lot of work. We respect licensing regardless of the size > of the contribution > >> - gpl is targeted at programs and fonts are not exactly programs > > Given the number of fonts we ship under GPL, LGPL or derived licenses > (including Liberation), this argument is not receivable. "I don't like > this license I'll just use another and no one's the wiser" — you're not > serious. > >> - we try to contact e.g. urw on some other issues (it's currently not >> even clear of some of the fonts were ever legally gpl'd!) but they don't >> react (such a kind of 'disappearing responsibility' happened before with >> some other font where eventually responsibility was transfered to tug) > > You can not work just with URW. The right contacts are Artifex and all > the people who contributed to the fonts since their release. > >> - some of the 'original' fonts contain additions of rather poor quality >> (greek and cyrillic) and when/how they ended up in there withoput any >> quality assurance is unclear, so in general one can say that these fonts >> have a somewhat fuzzy history > > Quality as nothing to do with licensing. You can make bad contributions > under a good license, and good contributions under a bad license. We can > ship the first but not the other. > >> we're currently convinced that eveything is ok with respect to the >> licence (btw, the amount of changes to the fonts are pretty large so one >> might as well wonder if we're dealing with new digitizations) > > Again, this is the kind of fuzzy logic that can not stand legaly. > >> Jerzy might have a more detailed answer since he's in charge of the >> licencing > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot > > _______________________________________________ > Fedora-fonts-list mailing list > Fedora-fonts-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-list > > _______________________________________________ Fedora-fonts-list mailing list Fedora-fonts-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-list
