> Michał Masłowski, Trisquel has fonts that cannot be built by anyone > else than > the original developers since they don't publish a source? > > That seems to go against the FSF's guidelines > http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html as > it appears to indicate that fonts in free GNU/Linux distributions must > themselves also be free and have source available.
Karl Berry considers it acceptable [0] since the font files themselves
can be edited (using e.g. FontForge). Font sources often aren't much
more useful than TTF or OTF "binaries". There is a similar situation
with TeX hyphenation dictionaries (they have patterns based on a list of
words which isn't published but would be useful e.g. for development of
other hyphenation algorithms) and bitmap images (although these often
aren't for practical purposes).
(I mentioned such fonts being included since usually it means them being
acceptable in free distros.)
> All information for practical use in a free distribution must be
> available in source form. ("Source" means the form of the information
> that is preferred for making changes to it.)
The problem is wording of "the form", many non-program works have
several forms that people with typical skills for making such works can
modify.
[0] http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2011-08/msg00008.html
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