Ubuntu Font Licence

Bug #769874
Comment #22

Comment 22 for bug 769874

Revision history for this message

Paul Sladen (sladen) wrote on 2013-04-03:

#22

Ejectmail, thank you for looking into it. Remember that the interim UFL has drawn up as a first take, with the hope to refine it, so input is appreciated, because out of it we can get a better libre font licence than the choices that were available at the time.

Obviously one must start somewhere. Ine must ensure that one always has the source code, the freedom to modify it, the freedom to give it to other people, and the freedom to sell it. The interim UFL has, as a minimum, all of these. I'm sure wording could be improved but it has a good foundation (note: the "propagation" wording is straight out of the GPLv3, various other sections come from SIL's OFL).

Onto trademarks, Trademarks, are about the point of use; and whether a consumer would be confused. It *is* possible to say (quite factually) "Iceweasel is based on Firefox", or "Iceweasel is Firefox with branding removed". What one cannot do is to say "Iceweasel is {insert huge big Firefox logo}". Indeed, free-software licences demand that attribution is made available and that the authorship is not misrepresented.

In the interim UFL text, one could potentially remove the (explicit) trademark sentence, and leave it simply (implicit). The net-effect would be the same (that you can't misrepresent to consumers that you are somebody, or something else).

The intention was to get existing type foundries working with a libre licence. I think the intention was to make it abundantly that people wouldn't be able to pick up MonoType FooBar Bold and sell it as genuine MonoType(tm) when they didn't have a trademark agreement to do so.

The bigger picture is what is important here. 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. For code, the industry with the GPLv2 and GPLv3. For fonts, it's not yet clear, and the hope was to try and solve that.

(nb. I know that the word "Ubuntu" here can be emotive, you're welcome to replace it with another word if it makes the discussion easier. Having "Ubuntu" there in the interim licence ensures that it won't be used elsewhere until it has been debugged. And that's where I would appreciate your assistance).

Ejectmail, thank you for looking into it.  Remember that the interim UFL has drawn up as a first take, with the hope to refine it, so input is appreciated, because out of it we can get a better libre font licence than the choices that were available at the time.

Obviously one must start somewhere.  Ine must ensure that one always has the source code, the freedom to modify it, the freedom to give it to other people, and the freedom to sell it.  The interim UFL has, as a minimum, all of these.  I'm sure wording could be improved but it has a good foundation (note: the "propagation" wording is straight out of the GPLv3, various other sections come from SIL's OFL).

Onto trademarks, Trademarks, are about the point of use; and whether a consumer would be confused.  It *is* possible to say (quite factually) "Iceweasel is based on Firefox", or "Iceweasel is Firefox with branding removed".  What one cannot do is to say "Iceweasel is {insert huge big Firefox logo}".  Indeed, free-software licences demand that attribution is made available and that the authorship is not misrepresented.

In the interim UFL text, one could potentially remove the (explicit) trademark sentence, and leave it simply (implicit).  The net-effect would be the same (that you can't misrepresent to consumers that you are somebody, or something else).

The intention was to get existing type foundries working with a libre licence.  I think the intention was to make it abundantly that people wouldn't be able to pick up MonoType FooBar Bold and sell it as genuine MonoType(tm) when they didn't have a trademark agreement to do so.

The bigger picture is what is important here. 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.  For code, the industry with the GPLv2 and GPLv3.  For fonts, it's not yet clear, and the hope was to try and solve that.

(nb. I know that the word "Ubuntu" here can be emotive, you're welcome to replace it with another word if it makes the discussion easier.  Having "Ubuntu" there in the interim licence ensures that it won't be used elsewhere until it has been debugged.  And that's where I would appreciate your assistance).