Comment 51 for bug 27858

On Mon, 03 Apr 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
> The text of the document itself is free, and we can always generate a
> PDF file from it which uses free fonts and ship that one. But we can't
> ship the "binary form", the original PDF with non-free fonts included.

Well, this is the decision, and this is what I am questioning.

> No, we only take away the possibility to read the document in a nice
> way, as you pointed out yourself. And we clearly document that a forth
> thing is missing, namely the usual
>
> - the user can extract arbitrary parts of the compiled document
> and reuse them

Ok, this he also can do with the document as soon as commercial fonts
are embedded. Otherwise it would be illegal for the author to use the
commercial font in this way. If you buy a font you have to accept that
you include the fonts only as subsetted etc etc (you know). So this can
happen always, and is in fact allowed. That is the reason why authors
are not allowed to include the full font into the pdf document from the
contract they have with the font company.
(Leave alone border cases of encrypted/copy protected pdf documents, we
are discussion here normal plain stupid simple pdf docs).

So I don't see a problem here. What is still left is that we take away
one freedom from a user. And give nothing instead. This doesn't serve
right.

> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal/25166

Thanks, will read it.

Best wishes

Norbert

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