Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Re: Bunch of new Fonts added to wishlist

[Sarantis Paskalis]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:13:03AM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
>  
>  On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 15:58 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  > >> Kerkis
>  > >
>  > > There is a Kerkis package for TeX (tetex-font-kerkis).  Nowadays, the
>  > > author of this font publishes TTF and OTF files, quite suitable for
>  > > on-screen display.  The license, however, is a bit ambiguous, possibly
>  > > even a removal candidate.  http://iris.math.aegean.gr/kerkis/ (see the
>  > > License subsection).
>  > 
>  > This one should have been passed through fedora-legal before
>  > inclusion.
>  
>  Definitely. That license is waaaay too vague as is.
>  
>  We'd need to know if:
>  
>  1. Modification is permitted
>  2. Redistribution is permitted (this is implied, but not explicitly
>  granted)
>  3. Redistribution in embedded documents is permitted
>  
>  That's just for starters. The commercial copyright "advertising" clause
>  is also painfully vague.
>  
>  Someone motivated (and likely, fluent in greek), should email the
>  copyright holders and suggest that they either clarify their license, or
>  consider relicensing it with an established free license (e.g. the OFL). 
I will contact the author to clarify the above.  Thanks for the 
guidelines.

-- Sarantis

[Fedora-legal-list] Re: Bunch of new Fonts added to wishlist

[Sarantis Paskalis]

Sarantis Paskalis wrote:
>  On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:13:03AM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 15:58 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> >>>> Kerkis
> >>> There is a Kerkis package for TeX (tetex-font-kerkis).  Nowadays, the
> >>> author of this font publishes TTF and OTF files, quite suitable for
> >>> on-screen display.  The license, however, is a bit ambiguous, possibly
> >>> even a removal candidate.  http://iris.math.aegean.gr/kerkis/ (see the
> >>> License subsection).
> >> This one should have been passed through fedora-legal before
> >> inclusion.
> > Definitely. That license is waaaay too vague as is.
> >
> > We'd need to know if:
> >
> > 1. Modification is permitted
> > 2. Redistribution is permitted (this is implied, but not explicitly
> > granted)
> > 3. Redistribution in embedded documents is permitted
> >
> > That's just for starters. The commercial copyright "advertising"
> clause
> > is also painfully vague.
> >
> > Someone motivated (and likely, fluent in greek), should email the
> > copyright holders and suggest that they either clarify their license, or
> > consider relicensing it with an established free license (e.g. the OFL).
>  
>  I will contact the author to clarify the above.  Thanks for the 
>  guidelines. 
And here is the gist of the communication with the maintainer.  The 
current license of the font is in the License.txt file in CTAN:
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/greek/kerkis/License.txt

The Copyright of the fonts belongs to the The Department of Mathematics 
of the University of the Aegean, Karlovassi, Samos, Greece

If you want to use this font family in commercial work (like in books),
we strongly request that you include in the Copyright section the fact
that you are using
"Kerkis (C) Department of Mathematics, University of the Aegean".

"The Kerkis fonts and kerkis.sty are licensed under the LaTeX Project
Public License, version 1.3c or later.  See 
http://www.latex-project.org/lppl."

He also gave positive answers to the primary questions and has relaxed 
the advertising clause (from the former *must* to *strong request*).

Is there something else that needs to be communicated or can we consider 
this font OK?

Thanks,

-- Sarantis

[Fedora-legal-list] Re: Bunch of new Fonts added to wishlist

[Denis Jacquerye]

On Nov 26, 2007 4:24 PM, Sarantis Paskalis <paskalis(a)di.uoa.gr&gt; wrote:
>  On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:13:03AM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
>  >
>  > On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 15:58 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  > > >> Kerkis
>  > > >
>  > > > There is a Kerkis package for TeX (tetex-font-kerkis).  Nowadays, the
>  > > > author of this font publishes TTF and OTF files, quite suitable for
>  > > > on-screen display.  The license, however, is a bit ambiguous, possibly
>  > > > even a removal candidate.  http://iris.math.aegean.gr/kerkis/ (see the
>  > > > License subsection).
>  > >
>  > > This one should have been passed through fedora-legal before
>  > > inclusion.
>  >
>  > Definitely. That license is waaaay too vague as is.
>  >
>  > We'd need to know if:
>  >
>  > 1. Modification is permitted
>  > 2. Redistribution is permitted (this is implied, but not explicitly
>  > granted)
>  > 3. Redistribution in embedded documents is permitted
>  >
>  > That's just for starters. The commercial copyright "advertising"
> clause
>  > is also painfully vague.
>  >
>  > Someone motivated (and likely, fluent in greek), should email the
>  > copyright holders and suggest that they either clarify their license, or
>  > consider relicensing it with an established free license (e.g. the OFL).
>
>  I will contact the author to clarify the above.  Thanks for the
>  guidelines.
>  
The outlines of Kerkis fonts look like those of URW Bookman and URW
Gothic. Kerkis has different a style of figures than URW Bookman and
has more character coverage.
If Kerkis fonts are derivatives of URW's gsfonts, then the license
should be the same as gsfonts. URW Bookman and URW Gothic are GPL'ed.

Cheers
-- 
Denis Moyogo Jacquerye --- http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo
Nkótá ya Kongó míbalé --- http://info-langues-congo.1sd.org/
DejaVu fonts --- http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/
Unicode (UTF-8)