Re: [Freefont-bugs] Question about extending FreeFont and GPL compliance

[Steve White]

Hi Andreas,

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Andreas Reimer
<address@hidden> wrote:
>
> If this mailing list is not the appropriate place for my question, please
> point me to a more suitable location.
>
This is a good place.
>
> - We would like to combine (merge) the FreeFont Sans font with other free
> fonts (notably CJK glyphs) and embed the resulting font into multi-language
> PDF documents.
>
> - We are going to release these PDF documents (not the extended Font itself)
> to our customers.
>
> Technically our approach works well as I verified with a quick 
> proof-of-concept.
>
> My question: Is our approach still compatible with your license (i.e. GPL3
> with font exception)?
>
There is no licensing issue with your proposed distribution of a PDF
document with a modified GNU FreeFont embedded in it, precisely
because of the font exception.

Please, go ahead!

Furthermore, it is also possible to distribute your modified copy of
the fonts to customers (even for a charge) so long as the other GPL
requirements are satisfied.  This would include licencing your version
also as GPL, changing the name of the fonts, making the sources of the
modified copy freely available, and including documentation to that
effect with your distribution.  Only if the fonts are distributed *as
part of* some other software product, must that that other product
also be GPL-licensed.

Cheers!