[Lohit-devel-list] ~OT: Publishing a font under the GPL

[Bernard Massot]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 05:38:14PM +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
> BTW another question: while GPL/OFL permit commercial usage of the
> font and we are fine by that, would it be possible for us to
> request/require being credited in such a publication using the font?
I think you can use the GPL or OFL license as a basis and just add a
paragraph about the restriction you want to apply. I believe this
restriction wouldn't make your license a non-free license.
See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException as both a
good point to note if you want to you use GPL and an example of how to
extend GPL.

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 10:22:04AM +0530, pravin.d.s at gmail.com wrote:
> On 19 July 2011 17:38, Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Isn't releasing a font as a TTF sufficient for placing it under the GPL? I
> > mean, a TTF font can be directly edited without much trouble unlike compiled
> > C-code, right?
> 
> Nope ttf is binary file. for GPL one required source so one can provide
> patches and updates.
TTF is binary as in "non-plain text", not binary as in "compiled version
of a source code". Here binary format is only used for efficiency
reasons. TTF format gives you access to full useful information. It *is*
a native/source format. It is nowhere "obfuscated" as object code of an
executable binary.
I agree with Shriramana that generating a .sfd file from .tff just for
the sake of getting a plain text document containing exactly the same
information wouldn't make much sense.
-- 
Bernard Massot