License issues with fonts shipped with Open-Sankore

[Cyril Pavillard]

Hello Mike,

Thank you for this feedback.

We didn't do directly the clearing of licences regarding the fonts so if there are any specific questions, I can put you in touch with the person from the french government that took care of it. Although, it is confirmed that they have indeed chosen fonts that are not fully compliant even though they have obtained the authorisations to distribute them by the authors.

Best regards,

Cyril

On May 5, 2013, at 4:46 PM, Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel at das-netzwerkteam.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> today I have had a quick look at the fonts shipped with Sankore-3.1 in the folder
> 
>  Sankore-3.1/resources/customizations/fonts
> 
> Only 3 of them can be packaged/found in Debian. The other fonts cause issues with the Debian free software guidelines [1].
> 
> With this mail I want to raise awareness on those issues by raising some green, some yellow and a red flag.
> 
> Green Flags
> -----------
> ec_cour.ttf (Ecolier Court, Open Font License), already in Debian
> ecl_cour.ttf (Ecolier Lignes Court, Open Font License), already in Debian
> 
> AndBasR.ttf (Andika Basic), I substitute that by the Andika font as found in Debian package fonts-sil-andika.
> 
> 
> Yellow Flags
> ------------
> For the below fonts I could not find a proper upstream (the makers of the fonts) on the internet. So, the license remains unclear. On download sites [2] I found: only use for non-commercial use (however, my French is not so good, so I may be mistaken here). This hurts DFSG-6, as in Debian there may only be software that can be used for any purpose.
> 
> AlphoneticGB.ttf
> ALPHONET.TTF
> Cursive standard.ttf
> Cursive standard Bold.ttf
> SCRIPTCA.TTF
> SCRIPTCO.TTF
> ScriptEcole2.ttf
> 
> The fonts below can be obtained from [3] (upstream), but they are licensed under the CC-by-NC-ND 2.0 [4]. This license is not compliant with the Debian free software guidelines (no commercial use -> DFSG-6, no derivatives -> DFSG-3).
> 
> ec_cp.ttf
> ec_cp_pt.ttf
> ec.ttf
> ecl.ttf
> eclcopt.ttf
> ec_co_pt.ttf
> 
> 
> Red Flag
> --------
> The font below is called Gino School Script. I could not find a license for it, but I found a site [5] where you can buy this font for 99,--€. So I guess, you better remove that from Github, as it seems to be a completely non-free font.
> 
> GinSSB60.ttf
> 
> 
> Consequences on Open-Sankore in Debian
> --------------------------------------
> The Debian package will for now be shipped without the named fonts. My (and probably also Miry's) questions are: can you substitute those fonts by fully free fonts? Where will those fonts be missing in Sankore and where will the user notice that?
> 
> 
> light+love,
> Mike
> 
> 
> [1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract
> [2] http://pointecole.free.fr/polices.html
> [3] http://douteau.ecolier.perso.sfr.fr/page_ecolier.htm
> [4] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
> [5] http://www.signumart.com/typo/famille/gino_school_script/be-57.html#preview
> 
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