Hi Alexios,

On 01/03/12 20:03, Alexios Giotis wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am generally interested in producing AFP with FOP and actually I am in the 
> process of doing so for a big project with complex layouts that already uses 
> FOP to produce PDF files. Unfortunately, there are several problems that came 
> up and I am investigating (but don't want to mention in this thread). 
> 
> While I am in that process, I am using AFP outline & raster fonts as it is 
> generally required by printing houses to embed in an AFP all the referenced 
> resources. The FOP project supports embedding AFP fonts, but has none in it's 
> distribution. I think it would be very helpful to have some fonts for 
> development, for automated testing and for the users.

That would indeed be very helpful.


> With the help of a colleague that owns a license for a commercial 
> tool, we could convert truetype or opentype fonts to AFP raster and 
> outline fonts. 
> 
> Since I am not an expert in legal issues, has anybody checked the licensing 
> schemes ? 

I believe such a conversion qualifies as ‘derivative work’, so you would
have to check whether the font’s license allows it. Then you could
convert the font and I suppose you can give the license you want, unless
the tool says otherwise. In our case this would ideally ASLv2, or any
compatible license [1].

[1] http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a


> For example, if we convert this font [1]  to an AFP font, could it be 
> distributed with FOP ? Any pointers to other free fonts ?
> 
> [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/license.html

Those fonts are licensed under the GPL, which is incompatible with the
ASLv2, so that wouldn’t work. The DejaVu fonts [2] may be good
candidates.

[2] http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page

It may make sense to set up a project on apache-extras [3] to host all
sort of test data whose licenses are incompatible with ASLv2. That would
allow us to remain compliant with the Apache license when distributing
the source code, while still benefiting from a wider range or resources
for testing purpose. Users who want to build FOP manually wouldn’t have
to download those additional resources, only actual developers would
have too. That may be in line with the Apache policy.

[3] http://code.google.com/a/apache-extras.org/hosting/

Of course, IANAL.


> Alex Giotis

Vincent

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