Re: Licensing Fonts

[Isaac]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 01:12:06 +0200, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> "Geoffrey Washburn" <washburn@acm.org> writes:
> 
>> I'm currently in the process of developing some new fonts using
>> METAFONT.
>> There were a couple points that I was unclear on when it comes to
>> programs that are fonts under FSF licenses.
>>
>> 1) If I GPL the source code to my font, does embedding or
>> referencing the resulting binary created when the font is rendered
>> and/or traced count as statically or dynamically linking?
> 
> Neither.  But the resulting document is a derived work of the fonts.
> 

I don't think this is good advice at least with respect to copyrights
on fonts in the US.  My reading of the law is that programs which generate
fonts are protectable by copyright, but the resulting fonts may not be
directly protectable.

I'm not sure a license like the GPL which does not contain EULA like
restrictions on how user's use a program can adequately protect a
font from being copied.

Isaac