Re: [Freetype] Licence issues

[Antoine Leca]

Thibault Jamme wrote:
> I want to release my project http://www.aptilis.com/ under the GPL 
> licence, but I saw that Freetype 1 (the one I'm using) is covered by the 
> BSD licencing scheme which appears incompatible.
>
> Does anyone know what the implications are? How to address them?

Use the "unstable" (alias the one from the CVS, or the one from the
devel tree), which is a pre-release of 1.5 (not yet issued, but you
should not have any problem. If you experiment some of them, please
report ASAP). This version is (will be) issued with the same dual-
license model as is Freetype 2.

Also note that to be anything useful, you should be in one of the
following 3 cases:

 a) you operate only at _very_ large ppem, and do not worry about hints;

 b) you, and all your clients (beware with a GNU license), do not have
  any problem related with the Apple patents;

 c) you, and all your clients (beware with a GNU license), have an Apple
  license.

If any don't, then you are potentially affected by the patents problem.
I can only ask you to set _very_proeminent_disclaimers_ about this
problem. I believe you can freely link (in the main directory of your
project) the patents page, www.freetype.org/patents.html, I do not
believe it will go away any time soon ;-). BTW, the French version,
www.freetype.org/patents-fr.html, is slightly out of sync.


Regards,

Antoine