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| 1 | + Ubuntu Font Family Licensing FAQ |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | + Stylistic Foundations |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | + The Ubuntu Font Family is the first time that a libre typeface has been |
| 6 | + designed professionally and explicitly with the intent of developing a |
| 7 | + public and long-term community-based development process. |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | + When developing an open project, it is generally necessary to have firm |
| 10 | + foundations: a font needs to maintain harmony within itself even across |
| 11 | + many type designers and writing systems. For the [1]Ubuntu Font Family, |
| 12 | + the process has been guided with the type foundry Dalton Maag setting |
| 13 | + the project up with firm stylistic foundation covering several |
| 14 | + left-to-right scripts: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic; and right-to-left |
| 15 | + scripts: Arabic and Hebrew (due in 2011). |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | + With this starting point the community will, under the supervision of |
| 18 | + [2]Canonical and [3]Dalton Maag, be able to build on the existing font |
| 19 | + sources to expand their character coverage. Ultimately everybody will |
| 20 | + be able to use the Ubuntu Font Family in their own written languages |
| 21 | + across the whole of Unicode (and this will take some time!). |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | + Licensing |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | + The licence chosen by any free software project is one of the |
| 26 | + foundational decisions that sets out how derivatives and contributions |
| 27 | + can occur, and in turn what kind of community will form around the |
| 28 | + project. |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | + Using a licence that is compatible with other popular licences is a |
| 31 | + powerful constraint because of the [4]network effects: the freedom to |
| 32 | + share improvements between projects allows free software to reach |
| 33 | + high-quality over time. Licence-proliferation leads to many |
| 34 | + incompatible licences, undermining the network effect, the freedom to |
| 35 | + share and ultimately making the libre movement that Ubuntu is a part of |
| 36 | + less effective. For all kinds of software, writing a new licence is not |
| 37 | + to be taken lightly and is a choice that needs to be thoroughly |
| 38 | + justified if this path is taken. |
| 39 | + |
| 40 | + Today it is not clear to Canonical what the best licence for a font |
| 41 | + project like the Ubuntu Font Family is: one that starts life designed |
| 42 | + by professionals and continues with the full range of community |
| 43 | + development, from highly commercial work in new directions to curious |
| 44 | + beginners' experimental contributions. The fast and steady pace of the |
| 45 | + Ubuntu release cycle means that an interim libre licence has been |
| 46 | + necessary to enable the consideration of the font family as part of |
| 47 | + Ubuntu 10.10 operating system release. |
| 48 | + |
| 49 | + Before taking any decision on licensing, Canonical as sponsor and |
| 50 | + backer of the project has reviewed the many existing licenses used for |
| 51 | + libre/open fonts and engaged the stewards of the most popular licenses |
| 52 | + in detailed discussions. The current interim licence is the first step |
| 53 | + in progressing the state-of-the-art in licensing for libre/open font |
| 54 | + development. |
| 55 | + |
| 56 | + The public discussion must now involve everyone in the (comparatively |
| 57 | + new) area of the libre/open font community; including font users, |
| 58 | + software freedom advocates, open source supporters and existing libre |
| 59 | + font developers. Most importantly, the minds and wishes of professional |
| 60 | + type designers considering entering the free software business |
| 61 | + community must be taken on board. |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | + Conversations and discussion has taken place, privately, with |
| 64 | + individuals from the following groups (generally speaking personally on |
| 65 | + behalf of themselves, rather than their affiliations): |
| 66 | + * [5]SIL International |
| 67 | + * [6]Open Font Library |
| 68 | + * [7]Software Freedom Law Center |
| 69 | + * [8]Google Font API |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | + Document embedding |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | + One issue highlighted early on in the survey of existing font licences |
| 74 | + is that of document embedding. Almost all font licences, both free and |
| 75 | + unfree, permit embedding a font into a document to a certain degree. |
| 76 | + Embedding a font with other works that make up a document creates a |
| 77 | + "combined work" and copyleft would normally require the whole document |
| 78 | + to be distributed under the terms of the font licence. As beautiful as |
| 79 | + the font might be, such a licence makes a font too restrictive for |
| 80 | + useful general purpose digital publishing. |
| 81 | + |
| 82 | + The situation is not entirely unique to fonts and is encountered also |
| 83 | + with tools such as GNU Bison: a vanilla GNU GPL licence would require |
| 84 | + anything generated with Bison to be made available under the terms of |
| 85 | + the GPL as well. To avoid this, Bison is [9]published with an |
| 86 | + additional permission to the GPL which allows the output of Bison to be |
| 87 | + made available under any licence. |
| 88 | + |
| 89 | + The conflict between licensing of fonts and licensing of documents, is |
| 90 | + addressed in two popular libre font licences, the SIL OFL and GNU GPL: |
| 91 | + * [10]SIL Open Font Licence: When OFL fonts are embedded in a |
| 92 | + document, the OFL's terms do not apply to that document. (See |
| 93 | + [11]OFL-FAQ for details. |
| 94 | + * [12]GPL Font Exception: The situation is resolved by granting an |
| 95 | + additional permission to allow documents to not be covered by the |
| 96 | + GPL. (The exception is being reviewed). |
| 97 | + |
| 98 | + The Ubuntu Font Family must also resolve this conflict, ensuring that |
| 99 | + if the font is embedded and then extracted it is once again clearly |
| 100 | + under the terms of its libre licence. |
| 101 | + |
| 102 | + Long-term licensing |
| 103 | + |
| 104 | + Those individuals involved, especially from Ubuntu and Canonical, are |
| 105 | + interested in finding a long-term libre licence that finds broad favour |
| 106 | + across the whole libre/open font community. The deliberation during the |
| 107 | + past months has been on how to licence the Ubuntu Font Family in the |
| 108 | + short-term, while knowingly encouraging everyone to pursue a long-term |
| 109 | + goal. |
| 110 | + * [13]Copyright assignment will be required so that the Ubuntu Font |
| 111 | + Family's licensing can be progressively expanded to one (or more) |
| 112 | + licences, as best practice continues to evolve within the |
| 113 | + libre/open font community. |
| 114 | + * Canonical will support and fund legal work on libre font licensing. |
| 115 | + It is recognised that the cost and time commitments required are |
| 116 | + likely to be significant. We invite other capable parties to join |
| 117 | + in supporting this activity. |
| 118 | + |
| 119 | + The GPL version 3 (GPLv3) will be used for Ubuntu Font Family build |
| 120 | + scripts and the CC-BY-SA for associated documentation and non-font |
| 121 | + content: all items which do not end up embedded in general works and |
| 122 | + documents. |
| 123 | + |
| 124 | +Ubuntu Font Licence |
| 125 | + |
| 126 | + For the short-term only, the initial licence is the [14]Ubuntu Font |
| 127 | + License (UFL). This is loosely inspired from the work on the SIL |
| 128 | + OFL 1.1, and seeks to clarify the issues that arose during discussions |
| 129 | + and legal review, from the perspective of the backers, Canonical Ltd. |
| 130 | + Those already using established licensing models such as the GPL, OFL |
| 131 | + or Creative Commons licensing should have no worries about continuing |
| 132 | + to use them. The Ubuntu Font Licence (UFL) and the SIL Open Font |
| 133 | + Licence (SIL OFL) are not identical and should not be confused with |
| 134 | + each other. Please read the terms precisely. The UFL is only intended |
| 135 | + as an interim license, and the overriding aim is to support the |
| 136 | + creation of a more suitable and generic libre font licence. As soon as |
| 137 | + such a licence is developed, the Ubuntu Font Family will migrate to |
| 138 | + it—made possible by copyright assignment in the interium. Between the |
| 139 | + OFL 1.1, and the UFL 1.0, the following changes are made to produce the |
| 140 | + Ubuntu Font Licence: |
| 141 | + * Clarification: |
| 142 | + |
| 143 | + 1. Document embedding (see [15]embedding section above). |
| 144 | + 2. Apply at point of distribution, instead of receipt |
| 145 | + 3. Author vs. copyright holder disambiguation (type designers are |
| 146 | + authors, with the copyright holder normally being the funder) |
| 147 | + 4. Define "Propagate" (for internationalisation, similar to the GPLv3) |
| 148 | + 5. Define "Substantially Changed" |
| 149 | + 6. Trademarks are explicitly not transferred |
| 150 | + 7. Refine renaming requirement |
| 151 | + |
| 152 | + Streamlining: |
| 153 | + 8. Remove "not to be sold separately" clause |
| 154 | + 9. Remove "Reserved Font Name(s)" declaration |
| 155 | + |
| 156 | + A visual demonstration of how these points were implemented can be |
| 157 | + found in the accompanying coloured diff between SIL OFL 1.1 and the |
| 158 | + Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0: [16]ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html |
| 159 | + |
| 160 | +References |
| 161 | + |
| 162 | + 1. http://font.ubuntu.com/ |
| 163 | + 2. http://www.canonical.com/ |
| 164 | + 3. http://www.daltonmaag.com/ |
| 165 | + 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect |
| 166 | + 5. http://scripts.sil.org/ |
| 167 | + 6. http://openfontlibrary.org/ |
| 168 | + 7. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ |
| 169 | + 8. http://code.google.com/webfonts |
| 170 | + 9. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGPLToolsForNF |
| 171 | + 10. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL_web |
| 172 | + 11. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL-FAQ_web |
| 173 | + 12. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException |
| 174 | + 13. https://launchpad.net/~uff-contributors |
| 175 | + 14. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ubuntu-font-licence-1.0.txt |
| 176 | + 15. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/FAQ.html#embedding |
| 177 | + 16. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html |
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