Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add ttf-symbola.

[Ian Denhardt <ian@zenhack.net>]

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Quoting Ludovic Courtès (2014-11-13 15:15:37)
> Did you hear from them?

Finally, yes. Here's the full response:

Quoting Donald R Robertson III (2014-11-11 10:57:53)
> Thank you for contacting us about this, and I apologize we couldn't get
> back to you sooner.
> 
> > [ian@zenhack.net - Fri Oct 24 03:28:57 2014]:
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > There's a patch that was recently submitted to the guix-devel[1] mailing
> > list which adds a package for the symbola[2] font, and there's some
> > question as to the licensing situation around it.
> > 
> > All we've found is the line at the bottom of that page:
> > 
> > >  In lieu of a licence
> > 
> > >     Fonts in this site are offered free for any use; they may be
> > >     installed, embedded, opened, edited, modified, regenerated,
> > >     posted, packaged and redistributed. George Douros
> > 
> > It's fairly obvious that the *intent* is for this to be free, but we're
> > concerned it may not qualify due to legal ambiguities (and the "in lieu
> > of a license" is not encouraging).
> > 
> > Is this in fact sufficient for it to be included in a free distribution?
> > If not, we'll likely try to contact the author to see if he's willing to
> > put something more suitable on it; is there a specific license
> > appropriate for fonts that would effectively formalize the statement
> > above (and fix the problem)?
> 
> It does seem clear that the author is looking to license the fonts
> freely, but the statement is a bit problematic as you saw. In the font
> world, much like in proprietary software, 'license' generally means a
> document that takes away a users rights and ensures that the copyright
> holder retains complete control over the work. It is likely that he just
> meant that the fonts were not under such restriction, but it would be
> nice to fix the issue. There's also the fact that the license is
> directed to fonts 'on this site'; so we would need to put something
> along with the fonts themselves to make sure that users understand what
> rights they are given.
> 
> The best course of action would be to contact the author to try and
> clear up these issues. As you can see from our license list
> <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts>, however, there
> isn't a font license that we could really recommend that would cover the
> same ground as what the author has outlined. But we could work with him
> to try and get a better licensing situation. If you think it is worth
> pursuing, please let us know and we will contact them
> 
> Thanks again for contacting us about this issue.
> 
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for your advice,
> > 
> > -Ian
> > 
> > [1]: guix-devel@gnu.org
> > [2]: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/
> > 
> > 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Donald R. Robertson, III, J.D.
> Copyright & Licensing Associate
> Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
> Boston, MA 02110, USA
> Phone +1-617-542-5942 
> Fax +1-617-542-2652
> 
> ---

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