[Pkg-fonts-devel] non-DFSG postscript embedded in fontforge [was: Re: Imager]

Nicholas Bamber nicholas at periapt.co.uk
Fri Mar 23 06:02:32 UTC 2012


Daniel,
	Thanks. I think this confirms that we were right to leave
libimager-perl in its current state and I hope you can sort out all the
issues with fontforge.

On 23/03/12 03:55, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> Package: fontforge
> Severity: serious
> 
> On 03/03/2012 07:48 AM, Nicholas Bamber wrote:
>> We have a package libimager-perl where we have had to remove a few
>> adobe-related test files as being non-DFSG. See
>> http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/TONYC/Imager-0.88/adobe.txt .
>>
>> However given a comment in the latest version's changelog:
>>
>> " - note that the generator of the apparently non-DFSG-free postscript
>> in MMOne.pfb is a Debian package."
>>
>> by which he means fontforge. I intend to email to the author and assure
>> him that this is a purely precautionary measure on our part and that the
>> functionality of the package is not inhibited.
>>
>> However since fontforge has been roped into the issue I wonder what you
>> guys think.
> 
> Hi Nicholas--
> 
> Thank you for raising this issue.  I just did a bit of research to try
> to figure out what this is about.
> 
> In fontforge, it appears that this code is embedded in
> fontforge/othersubrs.c
> 
> The originals of several of these functions seem to appear (with
> non-DFSG-free licensing) in the appendices of
> http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/5015.Type1_Supp.pdf
> 
> In particular, the licensing says:
> 
>>>> This code, as well as the code in the following appendices, is
>>>> copyrighted by
>>>> Adobe Systems Incorporated, and may not be reproduced except by
>>>> permission of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Systems Incorporated
>>>> grants permission to use this code in Type 1 font programs, as long
>>>> as the
>>>> code is used as it appears in this document, the copyright notice
>>>> remains
>>>> intact, and the character outline code included in such a font
>>>> program is
>>>> neither copied nor derived from character outline code in any Adobe
>>>> Systems
>>>> font program.
> 
> This license looks pretty non-DFSG-free to me, and it applies at least
> to the makeblendedfont array in fontforge/othersubrs.c.
> 
> Even more depressing, the makeblendedfont array in othersubrs.c actually
> has a modified comment (correcting a mistakenly copy/pasted buggy
> comment from the code in the PDF!) which potentially means that it is
> itself in violation of Adobe's restrictive license.
> 
> I'm not really sure what to do about this other than to open an RC bug
> against fontforge, which this e-mail should do :(
> 
> We could probably make a new dfsg-free "clean" upstream tarball that is
> still capable of building fontforge binaries by ripping out big chunks
> of this file (i haven't tried it yet), but i don't know what that would
> do to fontforge's ability to do Type1 font generation.
> 
> Another approach would be to move fontforge from the main archive to the
> non-free archive; but it seems like that would relegate many of our font
> packages to contrib, due to build-dependencies. :(
> 
> I'm open to other suggestions; i would be overjoyed, in fact, to hear
> other suggestions.  Does anyone have any proposals?
> 
>     --dkg




More information about the Pkg-fonts-devel mailing list