For approval: SIL Open Font License 1.1

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Mon Nov 10 00:14:21 UTC 2008


Nicolas Spalinger wrote:
> [...]
>
>   
>> There is nothing in the license that specifies the way the font is to be
>> embedded in the document. Thus, it is trivial to embed the font entirely
>> in the document, bit-identical to the way it is in a stand-alone file,
>> and then extract it. Because OpenDocument is a compressed zip archive,
>> that's trivial to do with two command line tools available to everyone.
>>     
>
> Since when is simply copying a font file into a zip archive embedding
>   
OpenDocument happens to do all object embedding by placing the object in 
a zip file along with several XML files that contain the markup for the 
document and the metadata, compressing the zip file, and the resulting 
file gets an .odf suffix. This is most often done for images and 
spreadsheets, but you can get any sort resource for the document in there.

You don't really have any guarantee that a word processor must modify 
the font to make it unusable. And your license doesn't say that must 
happen. And thus, when you say to a judge "this is not legitimate 
embedding", the judge will look at the words in your own license and see 
nothing to back you up.
> An embedded font (an actual part of the document it is embedded in) is
> not bit-identical to its original: the act of embedding will transform
> the font to make it usable from within that document.
Fonts embedded in HTML email are not modified. They appear as 
attachments, just like images, and you can pull them out.


More information about the License-review mailing list