From: Rahul B. <rah...@ya...> - 2009-04-03 11:12:49
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Christian has already clarified mostly everything. Here are my complementary bits.. ----- Original Message ---- > From: Sudhanwa Jogalekar <sud...@gm...> > To: "Indian Linux group ," <ind...@li...> > Sent: Friday, 3 April, 2009 2:34:14 AM > Subject: Re: [Indlinux-group] AksharYogini font family released > <snip> > 3. In the copyright notice within the font, it clearly says: Usage of > this font "Aksharyogini" is subject to the terms and conditions > mentioned on the website http://aksharyogini.sudhanwa.com. You can > read this using gnome-font-viewer.K font viewer does not show that. > All the debian font related packages I saw, everywhere the terms and > conditions/licenses is mentioned under the copyright file section. > Ideally, copyright statement should be included in every source file, and additionally details of the terms and conditions can be provided in a separate file. This is a universally accepted norm, and you do have a 'copyright' field in the ttf file format, where exactly your statement is mentioned. Irrespective of any application, its location is correct. So no need to worry about location of the statement. > 4. The terms and conditions mentioned are very simple, clear and > straight forward for any common user. People usually run away if they > see something called "license". This is an assumption. I cannot say if its right or wrong, please reconsider whether its so critically important one. I would assume almost every user has signed an EULA irrespective of softwares being foss or proprietary ones. >Unfortunately, in the FOSS world, it > is (probably) the most sacred word. > In Foss world, licenses are actually tricks, techniques and way of ensuring the fulfilment of the responsibility to ensure and protect the freedom. An example in this case, what if there is a modification needed in the AksharYogini font? I can easily see one, that it is missing the glyphs for U+0971 ans U+0972 which are the newly added characters to Devanagari, and atleast U+0972 is very important one for Marathi. Now, if someone wishes to add these glyphs to the fonts with all the good spirit of helping the project and people using it, s/he should be free to do so. But the unclear or incomplete terms given for the font do not allow to do so, as there is no garantee if the original auther will not have any objections to other's modifications. I cannot even host the modifed version on my own server, as that would possibly mean violation of the copyrights and I may get sued by the owners of the font, even if rest of the terms are fulfilled. This certainly is not how FOSS projects operate. For the importance of the freedom ensured by the Free Software licenses, please refer to any speech given by RMS on the philosophy behind the movement (available easily on youtube). He is the ultimate expert in convincing it :-) > 5. I was under the impression that Debian is THE FREE (as in FOSS) > distro. I did some digging and to my surprise, found that it has > non-free components also. (could be very less but it is there.) eg. > Package: t1-xfree86-nonfree (4.2.1-3) [non-free] that is mentioned > here: http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/t1-xfree86-nonfree > > 6. As such, if non-free components are also allowed in Debian, why > people are talking as if this font is kind of "untouchable" > If you wouldn't mind, I think it can be packaged as 'nonfree' for Debian, as suggested by Karunakar. But that doesn't ensures inclusion for all the other distributions, which is personally very dissapointing. Having it in all the major distros by default would be just great. > 7. People are "free" to select/deselect the fonts from Debian or any > other distro. > > Apart from the above, > > We (my family) believe that this is the only font released (at least > in India. Unaware about other countries) in the name of an author. > I am not sure what exactly is meant here. If it is about the auther Yogini Joglekar, it might be true. I am not aware if any fonts are named after any of the literary authers. Otherwise, mostly all the free fonts in India do acknowledge their authers, such as Lohit, Gargi, Samyak, Pothana etc. Many of them maintain a good racord and credits of even small contributions made by volunteers. To summarize, the 'freedom to modify' issue is not yet answered. It is not a big deal to put a name of a already well defined foss license of your choice additional to your own terms, given you wish to make it Free and Open Source. But it is a big deal to not ensure freedoms for a product that potentially needs to be accepted as free. If you wish to change the statement in the font files and have any technical problem, I guess many people here, including me, would be more than happy to help out. Thanks & Regards, Rahul. From Chandigarh to Chennai - find friends all over India. Go to http://in.promos.yahoo.com/groups/citygroups/ |