On Thursday 28 November 2002 07:13 am, Ben Reser wrote: > I seriously doubt that the removal of the fonts from their website had > anything to do with Linux.
> The two core platforms Microsoft cares about are Windows and the > Macintosh. Internet Explorer is the predominant browser on both of > these platforms, which the fonts now come with. I think you just contradicted yourself. From Microsoft's PoV, the fact that the fonts now ship to the only platforms they care about would be motivation enough to begin putting the fonts out of reach of competitors. Microsoft do care about Linux, deeply, because we're an explosively-growing competitor that standard tactics are almost helpless before the advance of. You all know Trey well by now, he's not interested in competitors except as objects of fear apon which to visit destruction, either directly or via assimilation. Linux can't be destroyed other than by completely locking it out of core markets (that's what Palladium is for, but it will fail) and can't be assimilated. Now although it seems legally clear that you could include the font EXE files themselves in the freely downloadable versions of Mandrake, `seems' is a bigger gap than many people expect. I myself would choose to include your RPM - because it does not include or provide any copyrighted material, or perform any illegal acts, so even if there does turn out to be a problem the act of including it could very easily be upheld as reasonable - but would have a hand near the `Yank From Distro' button for when Microsoft change the rules. I would even go so far as to include the intact EXEs as a separate item in Mandrake mirrors, with the understanding that we might be expected to yank those, too. However, I don't own Mandrake, and I'm a bit too cavalier about these things to ever own a Mandrake, so I can see that my approach may be wrong. Anyway, as long as Texstar and friends package it, and there's some Russian or Chinese mirror holding the fonts, it will be useful. Here's a feature request: if the primary mirrors are down, have the option of getting the wrapper app to hit Google with the exact names of many of the font files, and to try a number of the results at random to see if the files are present and real. I would include a unique keyword in the same file as the apps to avoid false hits, and also the sizes and checksums of the EXE files (now someone's going to raise their hand and tell me that MD5 is a DMCA-able circumvention device: well, so is a pencil). Cheers; Leon
