[Pkg-fonts-devel] About the licensing of URW Garamond No. 8

[Walter Landry]

Rogério Brito <rbrito at ime.usp.br> wrote:
> P.S.: Please, as I am not a native speaker of English, feel free to
> correct my grammar, style or anything that would improve the text.

Here you go.  Feel free to ignore any or all of my suggestions.

Cheers,
Walter Landry

------------

Re: Software Licence for URW Garamond Fonts

To whom it may concern,

I am a software developer associated with the Debian project [1], an
association of individuals who work together to create a free
operating system.  I am interested in including the URW Garamond fonts
in Debian.  Including them in Debian would make them easily available on
multiple mirror worldwide, showcasing the excellent work you have done
with your fonts.

Part of the criteria for including the fonts in Debian is that they
conform to a specific set of guidelines: the Debian Free Software
Guidelines [2].  The URW Garamond fonts are currently available under
the Aladdin Free Public License (AFPL) [3].  Unfortunately, works
licensed under the AFPL do not conform to the DFSG, a fact alluded to
in the introduction of the AFPL.

Despite that, people have been using, redistributing, and modifying
them.  Motivated by a desire to create a complete set of high quality
fonts for Debian and others, I built upon your work and their work by
creating a public repository where I can integrate their changes and
create a complete set of fonts [4].

As the project diverges from the original fonts as released by
(URW)++, it would be convenient if the fonts could be made available
under a license that is compatible with the DFSG.  This would make it
easier to attract contributions and distribute the result.

We can, of course, make the fonts available under a different name and
fully acknowledge that the initial work was done by (URW)++.  We can
also refer people to your commercial fonts, make it clear that the
project has only been based on your initial release, and that it does
not reflect the designs of (URW)++.

As a suggestion, it would be simplest if you chose a new license that
is already widely used and understood.  If you want to release it with
minimal restrictions, then the most straightforward license would be
the MIT license [5].  If you would like all modified versions of the
font to remain free, then using the GNU GPL with a font exception
would be preferred [6].

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you,

Rogério Theodoro de Brito
Debian Project Maintainer, Member of the Fonts Packaging Team
Instructor of Computer Science, Univ. Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brazil

[1] http://www.debian.org
[2] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
[3] http://www.artifex.com/downloads/doc/Public.htm
[4] http://git.debian.org/?p=users/rbrito-guest/urw-garamond.git
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expat_License
[6] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
    http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException