Upcoming gdouros-*-fonts license change and subsequent complications

[Alexander Ploumistos]

Hello all,

I doubt most of you know or care about George Douros' family of fonts,
as almost all of them are quite niche. However, there is one font in
particular, Symbola, that a number of users and packagers care for,
since it follows closely all the Unicode additions and improvements.

A few of weeks ago, the creator of the fonts took down his web page
and along with a message about the site being under reconstruction,
there is now this:
"Software on this site is free strictly for personal, non-commercial use."

In the past, in lieu of a license, he had this piece of text:
"Fonts and documents in this site are not pieces of property or
merchandise items; they carry no trademark, copyright, license or
other market tags; they are free for any use."

The previous wording essentially put the fonts in the Public Domain -
perfectly acceptable for inclusion in Fedora.

That change raised some red flags, so I contacted him about it and we
exchanged a couple of messages. Nothing is set in stone yet, but some
time soon he is going to upload a whole new license text (hopefully in
English), probably something custom-made. Along with the fonts, there
will probably be some sort of software, hence its mention. Apparently
he is not hostile to linux distros redistributing his fonts, but he
took issue when I pointed him to our licensing pages and he did call
redistributors and font web sites "license pushers" (at times he is a
bit temperamental like that). I asked him if the new license will
cover redistribution in a distro context specifically, but he has not
replied yet (I suspect he is away on Easter holidays).

With all that in mind and while I wait for the license text, I have a
few questions:

- Am I right to assume that "free strictly for personal,
non-commercial use" is incompatible with our guidelines?

- If it is indeed incompatible, would trying to convince him to adopt
a dual license scheme be the best course of action?

- If the new license prohibits us from distributing the fonts, do we
need to drop the packages from Fedora or can we continue to use their
current versions?

- Finally, if everything fails, is there a suitable and equivalent
replacement for Symbola?


Best regards
Alex

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 10:44:41PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos wrote:
>  Hello all,
>  
>  I doubt most of you know or care about George Douros' family of fonts,
>  as almost all of them are quite niche. However, there is one font in
>  particular, Symbola, that a number of users and packagers care for,
>  since it follows closely all the Unicode additions and improvements.
>  
>  A few of weeks ago, the creator of the fonts took down his web page
>  and along with a message about the site being under reconstruction,
>  there is now this:
>  "Software on this site is free strictly for personal, non-commercial use."
>  
>  In the past, in lieu of a license, he had this piece of text:
>  "Fonts and documents in this site are not pieces of property or
>  merchandise items; they carry no trademark, copyright, license or
>  other market tags; they are free for any use."
>  
>  The previous wording essentially put the fonts in the Public Domain -
>  perfectly acceptable for inclusion in Fedora.
>  
>  That change raised some red flags, so I contacted him about it and we
>  exchanged a couple of messages. Nothing is set in stone yet, but some
>  time soon he is going to upload a whole new license text (hopefully in
>  English), probably something custom-made. Along with the fonts, there
>  will probably be some sort of software, hence its mention. Apparently
>  he is not hostile to linux distros redistributing his fonts, but he
>  took issue when I pointed him to our licensing pages and he did call
>  redistributors and font web sites "license pushers" (at times he is a
>  bit temperamental like that). I asked him if the new license will
>  cover redistribution in a distro context specifically, but he has not
>  replied yet (I suspect he is away on Easter holidays).
>  
>  With all that in mind and while I wait for the license text, I have a
>  few questions:
>  
>  - Am I right to assume that "free strictly for personal,
>  non-commercial use" is incompatible with our guidelines? 
Yes. Any restrictions
on commercial use are incompatible with general
purpose distributions.

>  - If it is indeed incompatible, would trying to convince him to
> adopt
>  a dual license scheme be the best course of action? 
You know this probably better.
Have you tried explaining why we have
the requirements we have, to preserve the freedom to use packages, etc?

>  - If the new license prohibits us from distributing the fonts, do we
>  need to drop the packages from Fedora or can we continue to use their
>  current versions? 
We can continue to use them. With fonts the
"degradation" over time is
small (mostly we'd be missing new additions), so it should be OK to
have the frozen version for many years.

>  - Finally, if everything fails, is there a suitable and equivalent
>  replacement for Symbola? 
Zbyszek

[Alexander Ploumistos]

Hi Zbigniew,

On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
<zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl&gt; wrote:
>  On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 10:44:41PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos
> wrote:
> > - If it is indeed incompatible, would trying to convince him to adopt
> > a dual license scheme be the best course of action?
>  You know this probably better. Have you tried explaining why we have
>  the requirements we have, to preserve the freedom to use packages, etc? 
I have and I also have stressed the difference between us and a
for-profit font repository, but I think I will need to revisit the
topic…

> > - If the new license prohibits us from distributing the fonts, do
> we
> > need to drop the packages from Fedora or can we continue to use their
> > current versions?
>  We can continue to use them. With fonts the "degradation" over time is
>  small (mostly we'd be missing new additions), so it should be OK to
>  have the frozen version for many years. 
My concern is if he can retroactively apply the new license to the
older versions of the fonts. Is this a valid concern or is it not how
licensing works?

Regards
Alex

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 02:55:49PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos wrote:
>  Hi Zbigniew,
>  
>  On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
>  <zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl&gt; wrote:
>  > On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 10:44:41PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos wrote:
>  >> - If it is indeed incompatible, would trying to convince him to adopt
>  >> a dual license scheme be the best course of action?
>  > You know this probably better. Have you tried explaining why we have
>  > the requirements we have, to preserve the freedom to use packages, etc?
>  
>  I have and I also have stressed the difference between us and a
>  for-profit font repository, but I think I will need to revisit the
>  topic…
>  
>  >> - If the new license prohibits us from distributing the fonts, do we
>  >> need to drop the packages from Fedora or can we continue to use their
>  >> current versions?
>  > We can continue to use them. With fonts the "degradation" over time is
>  > small (mostly we'd be missing new additions), so it should be OK to
>  > have the frozen version for many years.
>  
>  My concern is if he can retroactively apply the new license to the
>  older versions of the fonts. Is this a valid concern or is it not how
>  licensing works? 
In general, a license may contain termination clauses, based on time or
whatever other conditions. But this particular "license" that you quoted
in your original mail doesn't contain anything like this, so imo it
is valid forever.

Zbyszek

[Alexander Ploumistos]

On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 8:30 PM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
<zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl&gt; wrote:
>  On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 02:55:49PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos
> wrote:
> > My concern is if he can retroactively apply the new license to the
> > older versions of the fonts. Is this a valid concern or is it not how
> > licensing works?
>
>  In general, a license may contain termination clauses, based on time or
>  whatever other conditions. But this particular "license" that you quoted
>  in your original mail doesn't contain anything like this, so imo it
>  is valid forever. 
I can only hope upstream feels the same way about it.

Thank you for the insights Zbigniew.

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 11:58:29PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos wrote:
>  On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 8:30 PM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
>  <zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl&gt; wrote:
>  > On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 02:55:49PM +0200, Alexander Ploumistos wrote:
>  >> My concern is if he can retroactively apply the new license to the
>  >> older versions of the fonts. Is this a valid concern or is it not how
>  >> licensing works?
>  >
>  > In general, a license may contain termination clauses, based on time or
>  > whatever other conditions. But this particular "license" that you quoted
>  > in your original mail doesn't contain anything like this, so imo it
>  > is valid forever.
>  
>  I can only hope upstream feels the same way about it. 
Upstream's feelings don't decide here. What really counts in the
interpretation by law, which in practice means interpretation by our
legal team.

Zbyszek

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le 2018-04-08 14:55, Alexander Ploumistos a écrit :

>  My concern is if he can retroactively apply the new license to the
>  older versions of the fonts. Is this a valid concern or is it not how
>  licensing works? 
Legally, he can’t. We can ship existing fonts forever, however having an 
hostile upstream and no one to work on fixes is not a good long-term 
plan

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le 2018-04-08 10:11, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek a écrit :
> >  Nothing is set in stone yet, but some
> > time soon he is going to upload a whole new license text (hopefully in
> > English), probably something custom-made. 
Try to point it to the OFL and its FAQ, it has been created exactly for 
this purpose and is Fedora-compatible. Try to explain him that unless he 
is ready to pay a lot of money to lawyers drafting a licensing text that 
has the expected effect in all the jurisdictions his web site can reach 
is quite difficult.

> > Along with the fonts, there
> > will probably be some sort of software, hence its mention. Apparently
> > he is not hostile to linux distros redistributing his fonts, but he
> > took issue when I pointed him to our licensing pages and he did call
> > redistributors and font web sites "license pushers" 
A distribution is a license pusher. However, try to assemble any 
non-trivial IT system and you’ll see license pushing is not a piece of 
cake. Distributions are doing license pushing for the masses otherwise 
no one but the GAFAM and IBM/HP/Oracle could afford to assemble IT 
systems (and those usually do not care about small markets like Greece 
or the fonts of George Douros).

If he wants his fonts to reach history students and researchers he will 
have to pass by some form of license pushing. There’s no way any form of 
(micro) payment can work out when any system is composed of tens of 
thousands of components that continuously change.

> > - Finally, if everything fails, is there a suitable and
> equivalent
> > replacement for Symbola? 
I suspect Noto will eventually cover all the codepoints but being 
entirely dependent on the GAFAM is a terrible idea mid term. We need 
people like George Douros and they need entities like us or it will 
eventually end up in a new lockdown era like in the bad 2000 MS-only 
years.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Alexander Ploumistos]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 10:24 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  Le 2018-04-08 10:11, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek a écrit :
> >>
> >>  Nothing is set in stone yet, but some
> >> time soon he is going to upload a whole new license text (hopefully in
> >> English), probably something custom-made.
>
>
>  Try to point it to the OFL and its FAQ, it has been created exactly for this
>  purpose and is Fedora-compatible. Try to explain him that unless he is ready
>  to pay a lot of money to lawyers drafting a licensing text that has the
>  expected effect in all the jurisdictions his web site can reach is quite
>  difficult. 
I take it you are referring to this:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=OFL_web

I understand and agree with all your points. From what he's let on,
the license has been drafted, he just hasn't found the time to prepare
everything else. When he does upload all the new stuff, I will check
with Fedora legal if there is any ambiguity and if the license is
indeed incompatible, I will bring up dual licensing and point him to
the SIL OFL.

[Alexander Ploumistos]

Yesterday evening George Douros uploaded updated versions of almost
every font I maintain, as well as the new "license":
http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/License.pdf

As you can see, there is no ambiguity, the text - despite its
shortcomings - presents a number of obstacles to the inclusion of the
fonts in Fedora (or pretty much any other linux distribution).

I contacted him about adopting the OFL license, some other compatible
license, dual-licensing, but he feels quite strongly about the
non-commercial clause and apparently he is quite content with the
scribble he's put together. His approach to the whole issue is rather
sentimental (understandable up to a certain point) and the discussion
quickly became heated, despite my efforts to tone things down and
focus objectively on the issue. However, in his last message, he left
open the possibility of negotiating a different license for/with
Fedora Project, but I don't feel I am the right person to engage in
any further negotiations with him.

I thought about orphaning the packages, but as we discussed, there
isn't any harm in letting them linger. If anybody else wants to take
over, feel free to do so.

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

> >>>> "AP" == Alexander Ploumistos
> <alex.ploumistos(a)gmail.com&gt; writes: 
AP> However, in his last message, he left open the possibility of
AP> negotiating a different license for/with Fedora Project, but I don't
AP> feel I am the right person to engage in any further negotiations
AP> with him.

This really should get to legal(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, as there are
some folks on there who are certainly the right people to have that
discussion but who probably don't follow this list closely enough to
guarantee that they've read your message.

Also, I would have to think that a license specifically for the Fedora
project would still have to be considered non-free because anyone needs
to be able to take what they get from us and use/modify/redistribute it
freely.

Finally, it would be nice to know what is special about these specific
fonts.  Is there functionality (glyph coverage, etc.) which would be
lost if we no longer had them?  I'm sure it would be good for folks to
know just how important it would be to not lose these fonts.

If they are important to have, then it would probably be a good idea to
just maintain a fork somewhere.

 - J<