Follow-up Comment #3, task #15914 (project administration): The Information for Maintainers of GNU Software <https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html#Copyright-Notices> says,
You should maintain a proper copyright notice and a license notice in each nontrivial file in the package. ... Some formats do not have room for textual annotations; for these files, state the copyright and copying permissions in a README file in the same directory. The format of the file in question does allow for comments, so it should include them. The GPL Howto <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html> explains why: ...programmers often copy source files from one free program into another. If a source file contains no statement about what its license is, then moving it into another context eliminates all trace of that point. This invites confusion and error. I believe this applies to a font file quite well, even better than to a typical source file of a program: people can copy it alone as is, and it will provide a set of characters for them. Anyway, the README file in Ethiopic/ doesn't really contain valid copyright and license notices <https://savannah.nongnu.org/maintenance/ValidNotices/>, either. P.S. After a closer look, I realized that I can't tell the intended licensing conditions of those files based on the contents of the tarball: the README in the topmost directory only says that they are public domain or "freely usable", and Ethiopic/README says "GNU Copyleft" which is more than ambiguous; if they are copylefted with a GNU license, the (re-)distributor must provide the source file for ethio24f-uni.bdf, that is, ethio300-uni.bdf, but that file is absent from the tarball; in other words, the tarball may be technically unredistributable. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15914> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.nongnu.org/
