[Fedora-legal-list] font licensing

[François Cami]

Hi,

Please note than I am very far from being a lawyer.

I would like to package a particular font for cultural reasons. Its
glyphs can be used to render two languages and it has been created on
behalf of an official government body for cultural purposes. That body
is distributing it through its website. Unfortunately, the archive
does not contain any licensing information. I emailed that particular
government, and got a reply saying the font was "was developed for
free distribution" and that the government "(allows the) public to
freely download. It is copyrighted to <insert government body here>".

I have read the licensing guidelines for fonts and I am aware that is
not sufficient, as IIRC that means the font cannot be modified, and
probably cannot be distributed by third parties. Am I right in
believing this?

I have asked them to add a copyright notice and a license to the zip
file, preferably (of course) the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Any advice would be nice.

Thanks,

François