Comment 9 for bug 113889

The license.txt is very long, but most of it is just legalese, like "Software and each of its components, including the source code, documentation, appearance, structure and organization are owned by Red Hat", "To the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, the Software is provided and licensed "as is" [...] To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Red Hat or any Red Hat authorized dealer will not be liable to Client" (this is in addition to the warranty already in GPL), "If any provision of this agreement is held to be unenforceable, that shall not affect the enforceability of the remaining provisions.", etc.

The parts that matter are:

a. It's under GPLv2 +/- 2 exceptions.

Exception 1: "As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License..." This is the font exception the FSF recommends (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException). Since it gives you rights beyond GPL, it's not a problem.

Exception 2: "As a further exception, any distribution of the object code of the Software in a physical product must provide you the right to access and modify the source code for the Software and to reinstall that modified version of the Software in object code form on the same physical product on which you received it." This is very similar to a GPLv3 restriction, and GPLv3 is approved for Ubuntu. Why Red Hat chose to add this clause in exception form to GPLv2, and only for a font, I don't know.

Red Hat could clear the air by removing Exception 2 and the legalese, and putting it under just GPLv2 or GPLv3 + font exception.