Bug 695210

Summary: Type1 fonts lack licensing
Product: Ghostscript Reporter: Jonas Smedegaard <dr>
Component: GeneralAssignee: Default assignee <ghostpdl-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID    
Severity: normal CC: chris.liddell, cloos
Priority: P4    
Version: master   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Linux   
Customer: Word Size: ---

Description Jonas Smedegaard 2014-05-05 18:29:29 UTC 
The Type1 fonts below Resource/Font/ has the following Copyright notice embedded:
Copyright (URW)++,Copyright 2006 by (URW)++ Design & Development

They do not have any license embedded.

The Directory does not have a license file.

The project has a License file at the root directory which mentions that files below Resource dir are "are also part of GPL Ghostscript", but what that really means is not clear.

If it means that such files have Artifex Software, Inc as copyright holder and AGPL-3+ as license, then how does that match the differently declared embedded copyright statement, and are users seriously expected to comply with AGPL terms for fonts - i.e. if serving the fonts as part of an online service (arguably distributing a PDF via a mailinglist fits that description) then the user must offer the source for the fonts via online download?!?

If (in my opinion more sensibly) the intent is for the Type1 fonts to be licensed as GPL-3+ with GNU font exception, then I believe that needs to be explicitly declared somewhere.
Comment 1 Chris Liddell (chrisl) 2014-05-05 23:50:41 UTC 
The fonts are copyright URW++, the notice is correct.

The LICENSE file states:

  Additionally, the font files (in Resource/Font) are distributed
  under the AGPL with the following exemption:

  As a special exception, permission is granted to include these font
  programs 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.


I believe that is sufficiently clear.
Comment 2 Jonas Smedegaard 2014-05-06 02:47:03 UTC 
Ahh, I see it now in git, and in 9.14 release tarbal.

The quoted text was added 2013-08-27 according to git log, but apparently didnt' make it into the 9.10 release tarball which is what I was (mostly) looking at before filing this bugreport.

Thanks for the help!  I was puzzled, because I clearly remember us discussing exactly that on irc at some point. :-)
Comment 3 James Cloos 2014-05-06 11:24:03 UTC 
The quoted language implies that, should someone get the fonts through gs, rather than from some other source, they are bound by agpl3+embedding_exception
even though URW++ distributes them under a more liberal license.

Is that Artifex’s intent?
Comment 4 Chris Liddell (chrisl) 2014-05-06 12:35:38 UTC 
(In reply to James Cloos from comment #3)
> The quoted language implies that, should someone get the fonts through gs,
> rather than from some other source, they are bound by
> agpl3+embedding_exception
> even though URW++ distributes them under a more liberal license.
> 
> Is that Artifex’s intent?

Well, as the embedding exception basically voids the extra restrictions in the AGPL compared to GPL, I feel the distinction is moot where the fonts are concerned.