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178 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
Ubuntu Font Family Licensing FAQ
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Stylistic Foundations
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The Ubuntu Font Family is the first time that a libre typeface has been
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designed professionally and explicitly with the intent of developing a
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public and long-term community-based development process.
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When developing an open project, it is generally necessary to have firm
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foundations: a font needs to maintain harmony within itself even across
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many type designers and writing systems. For the [1]Ubuntu Font Family,
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the process has been guided with the type foundry Dalton Maag setting
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the project up with firm stylistic foundation covering several
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left-to-right scripts: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic; and right-to-left
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scripts: Arabic and Hebrew (due in 2011).
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With this starting point the community will, under the supervision of
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[2]Canonical and [3]Dalton Maag, be able to build on the existing font
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sources to expand their character coverage. Ultimately everybody will
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be able to use the Ubuntu Font Family in their own written languages
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across the whole of Unicode (and this will take some time!).
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Licensing
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The licence chosen by any free software project is one of the
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foundational decisions that sets out how derivatives and contributions
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can occur, and in turn what kind of community will form around the
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project.
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Using a licence that is compatible with other popular licences is a
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powerful constraint because of the [4]network effects: the freedom to
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share improvements between projects allows free software to reach
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high-quality over time. Licence-proliferation leads to many
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incompatible licences, undermining the network effect, the freedom to
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share and ultimately making the libre movement that Ubuntu is a part of
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less effective. For all kinds of software, writing a new licence is not
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to be taken lightly and is a choice that needs to be thoroughly
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justified if this path is taken.
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Today it is not clear to Canonical what the best licence for a font
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project like the Ubuntu Font Family is: one that starts life designed
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by professionals and continues with the full range of community
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development, from highly commercial work in new directions to curious
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beginners' experimental contributions. The fast and steady pace of the
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Ubuntu release cycle means that an interim libre licence has been
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necessary to enable the consideration of the font family as part of
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Ubuntu 10.10 operating system release.
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Before taking any decision on licensing, Canonical as sponsor and
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backer of the project has reviewed the many existing licenses used for
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libre/open fonts and engaged the stewards of the most popular licenses
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in detailed discussions. The current interim licence is the first step
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in progressing the state-of-the-art in licensing for libre/open font
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development.
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The public discussion must now involve everyone in the (comparatively
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new) area of the libre/open font community; including font users,
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software freedom advocates, open source supporters and existing libre
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font developers. Most importantly, the minds and wishes of professional
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type designers considering entering the free software business
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community must be taken on board.
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Conversations and discussion has taken place, privately, with
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individuals from the following groups (generally speaking personally on
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behalf of themselves, rather than their affiliations):
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* [5]SIL International
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* [6]Open Font Library
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* [7]Software Freedom Law Center
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* [8]Google Font API
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Document embedding
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One issue highlighted early on in the survey of existing font licences
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is that of document embedding. Almost all font licences, both free and
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unfree, permit embedding a font into a document to a certain degree.
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Embedding a font with other works that make up a document creates a
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"combined work" and copyleft would normally require the whole document
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to be distributed under the terms of the font licence. As beautiful as
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the font might be, such a licence makes a font too restrictive for
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useful general purpose digital publishing.
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The situation is not entirely unique to fonts and is encountered also
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with tools such as GNU Bison: a vanilla GNU GPL licence would require
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anything generated with Bison to be made available under the terms of
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the GPL as well. To avoid this, Bison is [9]published with an
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additional permission to the GPL which allows the output of Bison to be
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made available under any licence.
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The conflict between licensing of fonts and licensing of documents, is
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addressed in two popular libre font licences, the SIL OFL and GNU GPL:
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* [10]SIL Open Font Licence: When OFL fonts are embedded in a
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document, the OFL's terms do not apply to that document. (See
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[11]OFL-FAQ for details.
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* [12]GPL Font Exception: The situation is resolved by granting an
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additional permission to allow documents to not be covered by the
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GPL. (The exception is being reviewed).
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The Ubuntu Font Family must also resolve this conflict, ensuring that
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if the font is embedded and then extracted it is once again clearly
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under the terms of its libre licence.
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Long-term licensing
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Those individuals involved, especially from Ubuntu and Canonical, are
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interested in finding a long-term libre licence that finds broad favour
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across the whole libre/open font community. The deliberation during the
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past months has been on how to licence the Ubuntu Font Family in the
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short-term, while knowingly encouraging everyone to pursue a long-term
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goal.
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* [13]Copyright assignment will be required so that the Ubuntu Font
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Family's licensing can be progressively expanded to one (or more)
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licences, as best practice continues to evolve within the
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libre/open font community.
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* Canonical will support and fund legal work on libre font licensing.
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It is recognised that the cost and time commitments required are
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likely to be significant. We invite other capable parties to join
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in supporting this activity.
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The GPL version 3 (GPLv3) will be used for Ubuntu Font Family build
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scripts and the CC-BY-SA for associated documentation and non-font
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content: all items which do not end up embedded in general works and
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documents.
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Ubuntu Font Licence
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For the short-term only, the initial licence is the [14]Ubuntu Font
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License (UFL). This is loosely inspired from the work on the SIL
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OFL 1.1, and seeks to clarify the issues that arose during discussions
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and legal review, from the perspective of the backers, Canonical Ltd.
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Those already using established licensing models such as the GPL, OFL
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or Creative Commons licensing should have no worries about continuing
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to use them. The Ubuntu Font Licence (UFL) and the SIL Open Font
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Licence (SIL OFL) are not identical and should not be confused with
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each other. Please read the terms precisely. The UFL is only intended
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as an interim license, and the overriding aim is to support the
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creation of a more suitable and generic libre font licence. As soon as
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such a licence is developed, the Ubuntu Font Family will migrate to
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it—made possible by copyright assignment in the interium. Between the
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OFL 1.1, and the UFL 1.0, the following changes are made to produce the
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Ubuntu Font Licence:
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* Clarification:
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1. Document embedding (see [15]embedding section above).
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2. Apply at point of distribution, instead of receipt
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3. Author vs. copyright holder disambiguation (type designers are
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authors, with the copyright holder normally being the funder)
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4. Define "Propagate" (for internationalisation, similar to the GPLv3)
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5. Define "Substantially Changed"
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6. Trademarks are explicitly not transferred
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7. Refine renaming requirement
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Streamlining:
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8. Remove "not to be sold separately" clause
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9. Remove "Reserved Font Name(s)" declaration
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A visual demonstration of how these points were implemented can be
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found in the accompanying coloured diff between SIL OFL 1.1 and the
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Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0: [16]ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html
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References
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1. http://font.ubuntu.com/
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2. http://www.canonical.com/
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3. http://www.daltonmaag.com/
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4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
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5. http://scripts.sil.org/
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6. http://openfontlibrary.org/
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7. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
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8. http://code.google.com/webfonts
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9. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGPLToolsForNF
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10. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL_web
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11. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL-FAQ_web
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12. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException
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13. https://launchpad.net/~uff-contributors
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14. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ubuntu-font-licence-1.0.txt
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15. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/FAQ.html#embedding
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16. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html
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