"Making a libre font licence that *real type design companies* might actually be comfortable with using on a large-scale, and which caters to their concerns in terms of metrics-stability and not having a product passed off."
But this license is NOT libre (yet). One of your important freedoms (to distribute trivial modifications) can be taken away at will if someone trademarks the font name, and therefore it is not a free software license. Also I'm not seeing it adopted by every proprietary foundry I see. Here's how I would amend the license: - I thought I should mention that there's an unintended consequence of the definition of "propagate". I wonder why it specifically includes "except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy". The license only grants permission to Propagate the Font Software, so essentially it explicitly does not grant permission to use the fonts or modify a private copy. At least the preamble gives implicit permission to do those things, and I recall reading somewhere on the Ubuntu network of sites a note saying "feel free to use it in your documents". - Additionally, it would be good to explicitly state that individuals do not have to rename modified private copies. The OFL doesn't do this. - About section 2a: Why would you want to distribute a font with no changes other than the name? You would only lose the fame that the original version's name brings. You are prohibiting something that nobody would want to do, so there's no reason to retain that clause. - Now to solve the problem of the naming restrictions. I took a while to think this over, because I know those restrictions were requested by the designers. Even if you remove "This license does not grant any rights under trademark law", the license is still non-free, because a trademark could still take away those freedoms at any time. I might suggest both removing that clause and granting the licensee an unlimited license (both within the conditions of the license and under trademark law) to use the font name in the "Y derivative X" name. For example, this could be appended to clause 2c(ii): "Notwithstanding any other provision of this license, in the event that a modified version is not Substantially changed, permission is hereby granted to use the name of the Original Version solely in the context of meeting the requirements of this section." Or something else that makes it clear that they may use the Original Version's name for any purpose in this context. That's what it would take to make this license free. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/769874 Title: Naming restrictions in UFL considered non-free by Debian To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/769874/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
