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