> Fonts are not software. They literally are for US copyright purposes (i.e. scalable fonts are "programs" describing how to draw a bitmap; bitmap fonts are not copyrightable).
I don't consider this an important issue for deciding what is software: I consider all works for practical purposes which are represented as bits (thus can be freely copied and modified) to be software. "For practical purposes" is from the user's point of view, we won't know that something isn't for a practical purpose unless we know all future users of it (there are interesting practical uses of literature). There is nothing specific about programs for Turing-complete universal machines for the user's freedom. > The freedom to use the font, for any purpose (e.g., you do not want to > use an Adobe font whose license forbids you to criticize Adobe with > it). Unsure if there are real examples of such terms, could be more convincing. There probably are licenses forbidding embedding fonts in documents, although this practically is a restriction of the freedom to distribute copies (another reason to consider them all just freedom). > The freedom to change it so it looks as you wish (e.g., if you do not > like how a character looks, you should be able to edit it). And to "study how it works", so in my opinion the source of meta-fonts (i.e. fonts output by an input-less program, e.g. Computer Modern has entire font families made by changing 62 parameters in source files) must be available for it to respect this freedom of the user. Changing fonts is more important for non-English languages. > The freedom to redistribute the fonts so you can help your neighbor > (because sharing is good!). The OFL has a pointless "restriction" of it, requring including a program with the font when selling it. I have read several reports of similar issues in non-font licenses. > The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others > (by doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit > from your changes). This freedom can be practically restricted also by using GPL-incompatible font licenses. These fonts cannot be merged with GPL-licensed programs, what would be useful in case of meta-fonts (they might e.g. contain nontrivial numerical algorithms). (These two meta-font-related cases are limited by no program newer than MetaFont, which outputs bitmap fonts, supporting this paradigm, and nearly no font designer making useful meta-fonts (e.g. Latin Modern had its source regenerated multiple times from "binaries"), I believe this to be possible to change. I can make a narrow sans-serif typewriter Computer Modern derivative in several hours, this isn't possible with typical fonts available only in e.g. the TrueType format.) There are additional reasons to use only free fonts in free cultural works: - different paper formats require relayout when printing, this needs font metrics - changes in text might require glyphs not embedded in the original version so nonfree fonts restrict the freedom to adapt works using them.
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