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Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management)Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management)Posted Feb 19, 2009 17:12 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462)In reply to: Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) by BrucePerens Parent article: Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Maybe it's good to quote the entire requirement:
The OFL clearly states that it is only the document to which the license requirement is not applicable, and the only uncertainty is the precise relation between the document and the fonts used in the creation of that document. But thanks to your shell script any judge will now be able to clearly separate the Font Software and the document, so I rest my case. ;-)
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Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 19, 2009 17:34 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] Only the one sentence that releases the license matters, because the rest of the license goes away, permanently, as a result of that sentence the moment the font is combined with a document. Nothing in the license can ever govern that copy of the font again, or descendants of that copy of the font, from that moment on.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 19, 2009 20:11 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] the rest of the license goes away, permanently, as a result of that sentence the moment the font is combined with a document That's not how I read it, but I am not a lawyer. So let's examine your favourite example, that exposes the truck-sized loophole: embedding a font by dropping it wholely in an OpenDocument zip. It seems trivial to do. As far as I can see there are three possibilities:
1) The font remains embedded in the document, modified or unmodified The first case is not a problem. This is what fonts are for. In the second case, you claim you can now relicense the Font Software, because you have just extracted it from a document. The license you are about to remove clearly refers to the document that you are still holding in your right hand, Font Software in the left. I think the judge will not accept this cheap conjury. The last case is the trickiest one. But unlike in this example, real-world examples would seem to require a non-trivial effort on the part of the abusing distributor. This is all the developers wanted. Whether or not it will stand up in court, like all legal matters, will ultimately only be decided in court, and not on websites or in licenses.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 19, 2009 20:27 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] 2) The font is extracted unmodified, i.e., including the original licenseIt's unmodified, but the original license isn't there any longer. Sorry, this is a result of what the license says. Now, if we brought this to court, you would be arguing from what you intended your license to say, and I would be arguing from what your license actually says. If you want to lose a case, having "do what I mean, not what I say" as an argument is an almost sure way to do it. It's unfortunate that the license is written in a way that a cheap conjuring act can disable it, but that's the case. Changing one sentence will fix it. The SIL group needs to get proper legal counsel and make that change.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 20, 2009 9:17 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] Now, if we brought this to court, you would be arguing from what you intended your license to say, and I would be arguing from what your license actually says. No. I would point to the clause in the Font Software license you are holding in your left hand, that says it does not apply to the document you are holding in your right hand. I would be arguing that the Font Software and the document are clearly two separate things, and that the non-applicability of the single requirement pertains to the document only, as the license says. If you would really push me, I would claim that the Font Software had already been embedded in another document, that was licensed under the OFL. I would borrow your script to show how this works. I would not win immediately. We would have a lot of fun discussing "document", "embedding" and "extraction" and other important terms in court. Which is fine, that's what it's for.
Okay, thanks for the tip. ;-)
Your suggestion on the OSI approval mailing list to change this sentence was already shot down informally by a lawyer who seems to think that this matter should not be fixed in a license. What I have been wondering about, is why you don't ask a proper lawyer to take a look at this (since you seem to care a lot), instead of starting a crusade against OFL.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 20, 2009 9:26 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] I will check with Larry, but I'm pretty sure that Larry means tha exact opposite of what you think. Larry is saying that the document could never be a derivative work of the font. He is not saying that the sentence in question does not give away all of your license rights forever.By the way, I don't know who you are. If you'd ping me via email, I will connect you with Larry directly. Bruce
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 20, 2009 11:24 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] I will check with Larry
Great, thanks. I appreciate that.
I love the double negation! Maybe you could ask him to take a look at the OFL, instead of having him to talk to me? ;-) Thanks for the offer though.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 23, 2009 10:16 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> Larry is saying that the document could never be a derivative work of the
> font.
I'm quite surprised someone like Larry Rosen is making such a confusion.
Of course the original *text* used in the document is a separate work that could be licensed in many different ways. However the digital *document* (as in text + font + rules making sure one is used with the other) is clearly a derivative of the fonts. It may be not obvious for a corporate document using Arial but you have only to go on a typographer web site where he exhibits his compositions and the way he managed to balance a particular text, font and illustration to realise there is creativity involved. (and yes the USA may have specific font exemptions to avoid copyright requirements in that case and no that does not help at all font users in other countries).
In fact font embedding in digital documents was added precisely to preserve this kind of artistic composition. People who do not care about it just do not use embedding.
And licenses like the GPL are pretty unambiguous on the way GPL material could be used in larger works.
So specific clauses are required to shield users for the embedding case (not to mention professional foundries are very careful not to let anyone forget embedding requires special authorization). And they need to be written by a lawyer. I doubt you can just say "this is not a derivative" when it obviously is from the law POW.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 24, 2009 9:50 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] I'm quite surprised someone like Larry Rosen is making such a confusion. Ah, maybe he isn't: he is not not saying what you are saying. ;-) Follow the link given above, especially this mail addresses your points.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 24, 2009 10:15 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Did you have that in mind ?
« Software license may prohibit certain combinations of copyrightable work and copyrightable font--but not if they are open source licenses! Only
Then I'll point the painfully obvious: digital documents are redistributed too. (even if we forget about the printed special case)
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 24, 2009 11:01 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] Did you have that in mind ? Not at all. I merely assumed some of the confusion you were speaking of was attributable to not having read the source, so I referred you to it. What is terribly obvious, is that you cannot create the BlahBlah font and use it to either allow or deny distribution of a digital document of which you are not the copyright holder. This seems more to the point, but I must admit I am not sure what you are trying to say.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 24, 2009 12:13 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Of course you can deny the distribution of a digital document that embeds your copyrighted font. That's how copyright works.
What you can not deny is the distribution of a document that does not include your work.
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 20, 2009 10:33 UTC (Fri) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]
That, too, depends on jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions are prone to accept by-the-letter interpretations of texts, even when it's clear to everyone that this was NOT what was intended by the one writing the text.
Other jurisdictions generally consider intent, so that if, for example, I write a document that on the overall balance CLEARLY intended to forbid a certain action, that is not voided, even if I misplace a comma somewhere, unintentionally reversing the meaning of a single sentence somewhere.
Still, I agree there'd be benefit in fixing that.
And what's up with the "cannot be sold alone", but "can be sold with software", does that mean if I want to sell the font, I need to include some software (ANY software) together with it ? Can the "software" be #!/bin/sh; cp fontfiles.wherever /usr/lib/fonts/wherever/
What's the purpose of this ? How does it differ from just outright allowing selling the font ?
Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) Posted Feb 20, 2009 11:22 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> And what's up with the "cannot be sold alone", but "can be sold with
> software", does that mean if I want to sell the font, I need to include > some software (ANY software) together with it ? Can the "software" be > #!/bin/sh; cp fontfiles.wherever /usr/lib/fonts/wherever/
The great enemy of font creators are the people who skim the internet for font files, put them in a huge directory, and sell the result on cd/dvds.
They're ok with pretty much any other kind of distribution, and this clause is here to allow distributing fonts inside an installation package, while preventing basic leaching.
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