[Lohit-devel-list] Relicensing Lohit fonts

[Pravin Satpute]

On Tuesday 13 September 2011 09:48 AM, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
> Good show. I have also been uncomfortable with the GPL for fonts. The
> OFL is far better and will facilitate my contribution to the project
> in future.
That's nice to hear.
We are trying for this from long time and great to see that finally we
can do it now :)

Richard thanks for your efforts in this matter. May be in next step we
can looks at liberation fonts licensing.
May be we can wait couple of days here for taking feedback from
community/contributors, then we can release Lohit with this OFL.

Thanks,
Pravin S


>
> On 9/13/11, Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> For those who don't know me, I'm a lawyer at Red Hat responsible for
>> licensing issues.
>>
>> The Lohit fonts were originally supplied to Red Hat by Modular
>> Infotech, under an agreement under which Red Hat could license out the
>> fonts under GPL plus the FSF's font-embedding exception.
>>
>> Since that time, within the Fedora Project and Red Hat we have
>> generally moved towards favoring a different open license for fonts,
>> called the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (the "OFL").
>> http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=OFL_web
>> See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts
>> (noting Fedora's recommendation of the OFL for fonts).
>>
>> We have also found that, while a GPL-based license for fonts has some
>> theoretical benefits, it is perceived by many as confusing to map the
>> GPL to fonts, and we believe the perceived burdens of GPL licensing of
>> fonts may be limiting adoption of the fonts at least to some
>> degree. We anticipate that use of the OFL would broaden the user and
>> contributor base for these fonts.
>>
>> Google in particular has for some time been interested in using the
>> Lohit fonts, including all the improvements made by this project, in
>> ChromeOS and (I believe) Android, but finds a GPL-based font license
>> unacceptable. Google is willing to accept fonts under the OFL,
>> however.
>>
>> Red Hat has recently amended our agreement with the supplier to allow
>> us to retroactively license all the Lohit fonts under the OFL. Thus,
>> all subsequent improvements made to the original fonts by the Lohit
>> fonts project can also be licensed under the OFL.
>>
>> Under the circumstances specific to this project, I believe we can
>> relicense to OFL subject to any objection by any past contributor to
>> the fonts. If there is no objection, we will proceed with relicensing
>> under OFL in due course.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Richard Fontana
>> Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel
>> Red Hat, Inc.
>>
>>
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>>
>