Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ / / / __ \ / / / _ / __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/___/_/_/____( ) /_____/___/__, /__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=820642 [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1876108 [3]: https://github.com/pwaller/pyfiglet/issues/89
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out?
Hello Legal,
I just bring this up again because the pyfiglet contributors and myself are still waiting for an answer.
Should I maybe ask this question somewhere else? Or can we have an update if anything has been done?
Also, can the FE-legal blocker be removed from the review request now that all the fonts that remain are under an Open-Source license anyway?
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
Le 23/10/2021 à 21:30, Lyes Saadi a écrit :
Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ / / / __ \ / / / _ / __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/___/_/_/____( ) /_____/___/__, /__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out? _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hi Lyes,
I'm not sure I can help (in terms of actually removing the FE-legal blocker in the issue), but I'm curious to see if I understand, from a legal perspective, what has gone on here.
Am I correct that there was the Figlets fonts pacakge which contained a bunch of different licenses, some of which were problematic for Fedora. But the pyfiglet "port", as they call it, has done the work of removing the problematic licenses thus creating a similar fonts package with only the fonts under "good" licenses?
Looking at the Github repo, I also see the MIT license at the top level. Your spec file notes there are many licenses, though, in the actual font files. I browsed around a bit, but I was curious as to how you discerned the other licenses? (i.e., manually looking or otherwise?) Just curious as to some of the details of package maintainer's process when it comes to licenses!
I'm not sure I agree with the legal analysis of the copyrightability of fonts as summarized, but I'm also not sure that matters if the stated licenses for all the fonts in this package would be meet the "good" criteria for Fedora.
Cheers, Jilayne
On 10/23/21 12:30 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ / / / __ \ / / / _ / __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/___/_/_/____( ) /_____/___/__, /__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out? _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
Le 14/01/2022 à 04:53, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes,
I'm not sure I can help (in terms of actually removing the FE-legal blocker in the issue), but I'm curious to see if I understand, from a legal perspective, what has gone on here.
Am I correct that there was the Figlets fonts pacakge which contained a bunch of different licenses, some of which were problematic for Fedora. But the pyfiglet "port", as they call it, has done the work of removing the problematic licenses thus creating a similar fonts package with only the fonts under "good" licenses?
Not exactly, the original figlet package removed problematic licenses a while ago, and, pyfiglet reintroduced other problematic fonts. But, recently, one of the maintainers decided to go through all the fonts, traced their origin and classified them. Those which had « good » licenses now live in the `fonts-standard/` directory, while those which had « bad » or unknown licenses where moved to the `fonts-contrib/` directory! The new pyfiglet package does not include the `fonts-contrib/` directory (I removed it from the tarball, and thus the SRPM to comply with the licensing guidelines).
Looking at the Github repo, I also see the MIT license at the top level. Your spec file notes there are many licenses, though, in the actual font files. I browsed around a bit, but I was curious as to how you discerned the other licenses? (i.e., manually looking or otherwise?) Just curious as to some of the details of package maintainer's process when it comes to licenses!
The entire breakdown can be found here : https://github.com/pwaller/pyfiglet/issues/89#issuecomment-899051848 (and in the comments following that one) ! And, I went through all the fonts again to make sure there was nothing missing/no error.
I'm not sure I agree with the legal analysis of the copyrightability of fonts as summarized, but I'm also not sure that matters if the stated licenses for all the fonts in this package would be meet the "good" criteria for Fedora.
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
Cheers, Jilayne
On 10/23/21 12:30 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ / / / __ \ / / / _ / __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/___/_/_/____( ) /_____/___/__, /__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out? _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list --legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email tolegal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct:https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives:https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hi Lyes!
On 1/14/22 5:19 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
well, I'm not sure I really have an answer - still trying to make sure I understand the question!
Le 14/01/2022 à 04:53, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes,
I'm not sure I can help (in terms of actually removing the FE-legal blocker in the issue), but I'm curious to see if I understand, from a legal perspective, what has gone on here.
Am I correct that there was the Figlets fonts pacakge which contained a bunch of different licenses, some of which were problematic for Fedora. But the pyfiglet "port", as they call it, has done the work of removing the problematic licenses thus creating a similar fonts package with only the fonts under "good" licenses?
Not exactly, the original figlet package removed problematic licenses a while ago, and, pyfiglet reintroduced other problematic fonts. But, recently, one of the maintainers decided to go through all the fonts, traced their origin and classified them. Those which had « good » licenses now live in the `fonts-standard/` directory, while those which had « bad » or unknown licenses where moved to the `fonts-contrib/` directory! The new pyfiglet package does not include the `fonts-contrib/` directory (I removed it from the tarball, and thus the SRPM to comply with the licensing guidelines).
Looking at the Github repo, I also see the MIT license at the top level. Your spec file notes there are many licenses, though, in the actual font files. I browsed around a bit, but I was curious as to how you discerned the other licenses? (i.e., manually looking or otherwise?) Just curious as to some of the details of package maintainer's process when it comes to licenses!
The entire breakdown can be found here : https://github.com/pwaller/pyfiglet/issues/89#issuecomment-899051848 (and in the comments following that one) ! And, I went through all the fonts again to make sure there was nothing missing/no error.
I'm not sure I agree with the legal analysis of the copyrightability of fonts as summarized, but I'm also not sure that matters if the stated licenses for all the fonts in this package would be meet the "good" criteria for Fedora.
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
So the specific ask for Fedora now is - can we include the fonts in the fonts-contrib/ directory as well, instead of only the fonts in the fonts-standard/ directory - is that right?
I'm not really clear on what the licensing is for the font in the fonts-contrib/ directory, as the few fonts I opened simply don't have any explicit license info. Do you know if that is the case (and therefore the problem in terms of redistribution in Fedora)?
Thanks, Jilayne
On 10/23/21 12:30 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ / / / __ \ / / / _ / __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/___/_/_/____( ) /_____/___/__, /__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake.
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out? _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list --legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email tolegal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct:https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives:https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list --legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email tolegal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct:https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives:https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hi!
Le 19/01/2022 à 04:16, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes!
On 1/14/22 5:19 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
well, I'm not sure I really have an answer - still trying to make sure I understand the question!
[...]
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is
solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
So the specific ask for Fedora now is - can we include the fonts in the fonts-contrib/ directory as well, instead of only the fonts in the fonts-standard/ directory - is that right?
Yes, that's what we're trying to do. (Also, removing the FE-LEGAL tag from the review request for now, since only fonts-standard is included anyway. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to do that directly.)
I'm not really clear on what the licensing is for the font in the fonts-contrib/ directory, as the few fonts I opened simply don't have any explicit license info. Do you know if that is the case (and therefore the problem in terms of redistribution in Fedora)?
Yes, these files are proprietary and/or have an unknown origin. If we follow the licensing guidelines for normal (Vector) fonts, it would be impossible to redistribute them in Fedora.
But, our argument is that all these files should be "insufficiently creative" to be considered copyrightable in the first place (in the US, at least), in the same way that Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. So, it wouldn't matter what their license is, they would just be under Public Domain.
Thanks, Jilayne
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hello!
I'm kinda reviving a discussion from the dead, but it's been since January and pyfiglet is still blocked with its review despite new versions of the package being licensing-trouble free as they only include the fonts which are Open Source and safe to include thanks to the great amount of work of upstream. And so, we'd like to go ahead with this to finally include pyfiglet into Fedora.
So, without focusing on the legal argument, I wanted to ask here what was the procedure for going back with a dead review due to legal issues. Can I for example just "remove" the FE-LEGAL tag or do I need some sort of re-review/approval from legal?
Greetings, Lyes Saadi
Le 19/01/2022 à 14:35, Lyes Saadi a écrit :
Hi!
Le 19/01/2022 à 04:16, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes!
On 1/14/22 5:19 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
well, I'm not sure I really have an answer - still trying to make sure I understand the question!
[...]
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is
solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
So the specific ask for Fedora now is - can we include the fonts in the fonts-contrib/ directory as well, instead of only the fonts in the fonts-standard/ directory - is that right?
Yes, that's what we're trying to do. (Also, removing the FE-LEGAL tag from the review request for now, since only fonts-standard is included anyway. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to do that directly.)
I'm not really clear on what the licensing is for the font in the fonts-contrib/ directory, as the few fonts I opened simply don't have any explicit license info. Do you know if that is the case (and therefore the problem in terms of redistribution in Fedora)?
Yes, these files are proprietary and/or have an unknown origin. If we follow the licensing guidelines for normal (Vector) fonts, it would be impossible to redistribute them in Fedora.
But, our argument is that all these files should be "insufficiently creative" to be considered copyrightable in the first place (in the US, at least), in the same way that Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. So, it wouldn't matter what their license is, they would just be under Public Domain.
Thanks, Jilayne
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org
Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 8:59 PM Lyes Saadi ml@lyes.eu wrote:
Hello!
I'm kinda reviving a discussion from the dead, but it's been since January and pyfiglet is still blocked with its review despite new versions of the package being licensing-trouble free as they only include the fonts which are Open Source and safe to include thanks to the great amount of work of upstream. And so, we'd like to go ahead with this to finally include pyfiglet into Fedora.
So, without focusing on the legal argument, I wanted to ask here what was the procedure for going back with a dead review due to legal issues. Can I for example just "remove" the FE-LEGAL tag or do I need some sort of re-review/approval from legal?
If I'm not mistaken I have just removed the FE-Legal block.
Richard
Le 19/01/2022 à 14:35, Lyes Saadi a écrit :
Hi!
Le 19/01/2022 à 04:16, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes!
On 1/14/22 5:19 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
well, I'm not sure I really have an answer - still trying to make sure I understand the question!
[...]
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is
solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
So the specific ask for Fedora now is - can we include the fonts in the fonts-contrib/ directory as well, instead of only the fonts in the fonts-standard/ directory - is that right?
Yes, that's what we're trying to do. (Also, removing the FE-LEGAL tag from the review request for now, since only fonts-standard is included anyway. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to do that directly.)
I'm not really clear on what the licensing is for the font in the fonts-contrib/ directory, as the few fonts I opened simply don't have any explicit license info. Do you know if that is the case (and therefore the problem in terms of redistribution in Fedora)?
Yes, these files are proprietary and/or have an unknown origin. If we follow the licensing guidelines for normal (Vector) fonts, it would be impossible to redistribute them in Fedora.
But, our argument is that all these files should be "insufficiently creative" to be considered copyrightable in the first place (in the US, at least), in the same way that Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. So, it wouldn't matter what their license is, they would just be under Public Domain.
Thanks, Jilayne
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org
Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
Hello,
Thank you so much for taking care of this :D!
And, yes, the FE-LEGAL block was removed!
Thank you! Lyes Saadi
Le 26/07/2022 à 06:15, Richard Fontana a écrit :
On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 8:59 PM Lyes Saadi ml@lyes.eu wrote:
Hello!
I'm kinda reviving a discussion from the dead, but it's been since January and pyfiglet is still blocked with its review despite new versions of the package being licensing-trouble free as they only include the fonts which are Open Source and safe to include thanks to the great amount of work of upstream. And so, we'd like to go ahead with this to finally include pyfiglet into Fedora.
So, without focusing on the legal argument, I wanted to ask here what was the procedure for going back with a dead review due to legal issues. Can I for example just "remove" the FE-LEGAL tag or do I need some sort of re-review/approval from legal?
If I'm not mistaken I have just removed the FE-Legal block.
Richard
Le 19/01/2022 à 14:35, Lyes Saadi a écrit :
Hi!
Le 19/01/2022 à 04:16, Jilayne Lovejoy a écrit :
Hi Lyes!
On 1/14/22 5:19 PM, Lyes Saadi wrote:
Hello! And thank you for your answer!
well, I'm not sure I really have an answer - still trying to make sure I understand the question!
[...]
We'd love to have all the fonts included if our legal argument is
solid enough, though, since there is no precedent in US courts (as far as we know, we are no lawyers), I can understand why it is an issue for the Fedora Project. But, yes, all the fonts which are now included are in the « good » license list.
So the specific ask for Fedora now is - can we include the fonts in the fonts-contrib/ directory as well, instead of only the fonts in the fonts-standard/ directory - is that right?
Yes, that's what we're trying to do. (Also, removing the FE-LEGAL tag from the review request for now, since only fonts-standard is included anyway. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to do that directly.)
I'm not really clear on what the licensing is for the font in the fonts-contrib/ directory, as the few fonts I opened simply don't have any explicit license info. Do you know if that is the case (and therefore the problem in terms of redistribution in Fedora)?
Yes, these files are proprietary and/or have an unknown origin. If we follow the licensing guidelines for normal (Vector) fonts, it would be impossible to redistribute them in Fedora.
But, our argument is that all these files should be "insufficiently creative" to be considered copyrightable in the first place (in the US, at least), in the same way that Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. So, it wouldn't matter what their license is, they would just be under Public Domain.
Thanks, Jilayne
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org
Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
-
Jilayne Lovejoy -
Lyes Saadi -
Lyes Saadi -
Richard Fontana