Bug 690533 - please add the "Font Exception"
Summary: please add the "Font Exception"
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fonts
Classification: Unclassified
Component: free URW (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P4 major
Assignee: Ralph Giles
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-06-11 16:23 UTC by N. de Jonge
Modified: 2009-07-12 19:00 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
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Description N. de Jonge 2009-06-11 16:23:59 UTC
Please add the "Font Exception" description to the LICENSE file.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException
This will allow people to embed the fonts in Resource/Font.

Right now, everyone who (for example) uses the PDF export functionality of
OpenOffice.org to produce documents that _embed_ fonts from GPL Ghostscript
(Resource/Font) has to make their entire documents GPL'ed. This includes the
Century Schoolbook L font, which is embedded in PDF files by default and is a
font that is frequently used for books.

I mentioned this to Karl Berry from the Free Software Foundation
(licensing@fsf.org) and he wrote me back: "Hello Mr. de Jonge -- thanks for
informing us.  I hope Artifex responds positively."
Comment 1 N. de Jonge 2009-07-11 03:11:09 UTC
It has been a month now and the status of this bug report is still on
"UNCONFIRMED", even though its severity is set to "major". It would be nice if
someone would take a look at it.
Comment 2 Ray Johnston 2009-07-11 08:36:16 UTC
Artifex does not own the copyright to the URW fonts that URW graciously released
under GPL. We will forward this request to them. Note that this issue has
persisted for several years, so is not urgent or "major". In fact, I personally
think this borders on the ridiculous, but then I consider much "lawyering" as
thus.

The intent of the GPL is to allow people that use software, in this case font
programs, to modify them to fix problems or to to extend the functionality 
(such as adding glyphs). Since fonts (as well as images and ICC profiles) can be
extracted from PDF documents using Ghostscript, then Ghostscript _does_ provide
for the font source as required by (at least the spirit of) GPL.

I will attach a program to extract fonts from a PDF using Ghostscript.
Comment 3 N. de Jonge 2009-07-11 10:16:53 UTC
Thank you for forwarding the request.

> The intent of the GPL is to allow people that
> use software, in this case font programs, to
> modify them to fix problems or to to extend
> the functionality (such as adding glyphs).

The point is that section 1b of the GPL2 states: "You must cause any work that
you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from
the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all
third parties under the terms of this License."
And, since a document (a copyrighted work) is derived from the font program
(another work), it would have to be licensed under the GPL2.
This is mentioned specifically on the GNU website at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts
"However, note that it does not permit embedding the font in a document unless
that document is also licensed under the GPL."
See also: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis

By the way, I have another request, also of "major" importance.
The LICENSE file appears to be missing this line:
Copyright (C) yyyy  name of author
You're not assigning the copyright to anyone.
This may be why you don't mention that the font files are copyrighted by URW,
which is an important thing to do. I understand that _you_ know it's like that,
but most people have no idea. The LICENSE file should state who holds the
copyright(s) of which portions of the GPL2 package.

> Note that this issue has persisted for several
> years, so is not urgent or "major".

Well, the Vietnam War lasted over 15 years; yet, during its last years, ending
it was still both an urgent and major matter.
Comment 4 Ralph Giles 2009-07-11 10:29:55 UTC
The individual source files contain their own copyright attribution lines. Is
that not sufficient? Maintaining a list of copyright holders for all the files
would be error-prone.
Comment 5 N. de Jonge 2009-07-11 10:47:46 UTC
> Maintaining a list of copyright holders for
> all the files would be error-prone.

You could state that the source files contain their own copyright attribution
lines. But I really think you should also mention the copyright owners of all
other files in the package, including URW for the font files.
Comment 6 N. de Jonge 2009-07-11 12:08:00 UTC
Okay, Valek Filippov (gs-fonts) e-mailed me just now that the fonts already
contain a font exception. I could not see this with fontforge, but he suggested
me to use a hex editor. Indeed, they contain these lines:
-----
% Copyright URW Software, Copyright 1997 by URW.% URW Software,
Copyright 1997 by URW.
% See the file COPYING (GNU General Public License) for license conditions..
% As a special exception, permission is granted to include this font.
% program in a Postscript or PDF file that consists of a document that.
% contains text to be displayed or printed using this font, regardless.
% of the conditions or license applying to the document itself.
-----

It would be nice if the LICENSE file would include this information or if the
Resource/Font/ directory would have a README file that contains a copyright
notice and mentions the font exception.
Comment 7 Ray Johnston 2009-07-11 16:39:05 UTC
As mentioned before, the URW fonts are NOT owned by Artifex Software, and any
further modifications such as the bug submitter (must be a lawyer), suggests
are not needed. The URW fonts ARE distributed under GPL and contain the font
exception (hopefully this is from URW and _not_ a later change by someone
unauthorized to change the terms of the license).

Adding further noise to the LICENSE file, while it might pacify some, is extra
work for us and we have better things to do.

If the submitter or anyone else wishes to submit a patch with improvements to
the documentation can do so and we will review it (eventually) and decide if we
want to commit it.

Since no one is in violation of the GPL by releasing documents that embed
the URW fonts we distribute under the GPL, closing as WONTFIX.
Comment 8 Ray Johnston 2009-07-12 19:00:11 UTC
I added toolbin/extractFonts.ps that allows fonts to be extracted from a PDF,
which allows a user to get the 'source' of a font and (with a font editor)
modify it as is intended by the GPL.

Note that I still am unclear about why including a GPL'ed font in a PDF is seen
as making the entire PDF GPL (assuming that the GPL'ed font does not specify
the font exclusion amendment as the URW fonts do). This to my (NON-LAWYER)
thinking seems specious since it is not the PDF data, but the PDF interpreter
(Acrobat, GS, xpdf, ...) that is "running" the font program and the 'source'
for the program is present in the PDF if the font is embedded. It's like
saying that ANY collection of data that includes GPL'ed software is ALL GPL,
which means that any linux distro that includes ANY non-GPL components that
run on the same OS will be making those non-GPL components GPL. Aren't there
non-GPL drivers and utilities on the linux distributions.

No response it needed since the point is moot.

BTW, the tools are added with rev. 9858