Re: [gnu.org #954922] Vague "licensing" for the symbola font.

[John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>]

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On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 07:15:01AM -0800, Jason Self wrote:
     Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> wrote:
     
     > IIUC it applies to all the files.  Quotation from
     > <http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/>:
     >
     > --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
     > In lieu of a licence
     >
     > Fonts and documents in this site are not pieces of property or 
     > merchandise items; they carry no trademark, copyright, license or 
     > other market tags; they are offered free for any use.
     > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
     
     Couldn't this be used as a statement that they're abandoning their
     copyright [0]? It's been saved away on the Wayback Machine [1] for
     future documentation, just in case.
     
     [0]
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonment_%28legal%29#Abandonment_of_copyright
     [1]
     https://web.archive.org/web/20150113144655/http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/


Like the wikipedia article says, in many countries jurists argue if it is 
possible to "place" copyright in the public domain.   In the UK it is utterly
impossible.  In Australia, it is explicitly provided in the Copyright Act.  In
the USA, nobody is sure.

In the case, that it is not possible, then the statement 
that "[the fonts] carry no copyright", would simply not be true.

It could become a real issue, if, say, the author dies, his hiers then decide to
 make it into a proprietary software.

I think Guix is right to take the cautious approach.  

(What actually depends on these fonts?  There are oodles of fonts today.  Can it
be substituted by something else?)


J'


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