License for console fonts

2011-05-09 Thread Sean Hamilton 
Hello,

What is the license on the fonts in /usr/share/syscons/fonts,
especially swiss-8x8? Who/what is their origin? Would it be acceptable
to include these binaries with a GPL-licensed program?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Sean Hamilton seanhamil...@gmail.com
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Re: License for console fonts

2011-05-09 Thread Dan Nelson 
In the last episode (May 09), Sean Hamilton said:
 What is the license on the fonts in /usr/share/syscons/fonts, especially
 swiss-8x8?  Who/what is their origin?  Would it be acceptable to include
 these binaries with a GPL-licensed program?

I submitted the swiss fonts back in 1997, and I have a file called
swisst.com on an old DOS directory dated 1995, so they're probably even
older than that.  I seem to remember the 8x16 font was inspired by a sample
font that came with the ancient DOS font editor Font Mania, but for
nostalgia's sake I goooled for it, started up DOSBox, and all of the sample
fonts are fancy and not suitable for daily use.  I don't think I came up
with the name swiss myself, so I probably used another VGA font as a
template, but my guess is the original author isn't concerned about the
copyright status...  You can consider them 2-clause BSD licensed like the
rest of FreeBSD, until someone can find an older font that looks similar.

I mainly wanted a sans-serif font that didn't waste so many pixels on
whitespace between letters.  Capitals and numbers on the 8x16 font are 1
pixel taller than a default ROM font, which really makes it stand out.  The
8x8 font was copied from the 8x16 font, but at 8x8 there really isn't much
personalization you can do, apart from decide serifs, or not? :)

-- 
Dan Nelson
dnel...@allantgroup.com
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Re: License for console fonts

2011-05-09 Thread Robert Bonomi 
 From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Mon May  9 18:04:36 2011
 Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 18:04:30 -0500
 From: Dan Nelson dnel...@allantgroup.com
 To: Sean Hamilton seanhamil...@gmail.com
 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
 Subject: Re: License for console fonts

 In the last episode (May 09), Sean Hamilton said:
  What is the license on the fonts in /usr/share/syscons/fonts, especially
  swiss-8x8?  Who/what is their origin?  Would it be acceptable to include
  these binaries with a GPL-licensed program?

 I submitted the swiss fonts back in 1997, and I have a file called
 swisst.com on an old DOS directory dated 1995, so they're probably even
 older than that.  I seem to remember the 8x16 font was inspired by a sample
 font that came with the ancient DOS font editor Font Mania, but for
 nostalgia's sake I goooled for it, started up DOSBox, and all of the sample
 fonts are fancy and not suitable for daily use.  I don't think I came up
 with the name swiss myself, so I probably used another VGA font as a
 template, but my guess is the original author isn't concerned about the
 copyright status...  You can consider them 2-clause BSD licensed like the
 rest of FreeBSD, until someone can find an older font that looks similar.

'Swiss' is a name _many_ people used for a free Helvetica look-alike font.

a substantial number were explicitly released into the public domain by being
prduced _without_ any copright notice -- This was *before* U.S. adpted the 
Berne Convention' copyright rules, and publication without copyright claim
did, in _those_days_ (although *not* true today) did put it in the public
domain.

GNU, and GhostScript, had a Swiss font.

Cassiday  Greene (a type foundry company) had a Swiss in their catalogue.
(copyrighted, but -very- inexpensive to license.)

I think the X11 distribution has a real, licensed, Helvetica,

Thus, an 'authoritative' answer abuut the 'swiss' font in the FreeBSDo
distribution is going to depend on _which_ font named swiss that it 
actually is.   I would _not_ want to hazard a guess on that point -- among
other things, I'm *nt* a good enough typographer to tell the difference
between 'very simmilar' fonts.  wry grin


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