[License-discuss] Is the IPA Font License truly open source?

[Shuji Sado]

Hi,

Thanks for looping me in—since my X/Twitter thread was referenced, I should
clarify my view.

As a matter of fact, the Council for the Promotion of Character Information
Technology (CITPC), which inherited the font program from IPA, contacted
the operator of a site that offered WOFF-converted builds of the MJ Mincho
font released under the IPA Font License v1.0, and asked them to refrain
from publishing those fonts. The operator subsequently removed the fonts. I
don’t know what was discussed privately between the parties.

Based on the public information, my read is: the WOFF builds were treated
as a “derived program” under the IPA Font License (format conversions are
expressly considered derivatives), and the redistribution appears not to
have followed Article 3.1 conditions. If they had renamed the
font/family/file names, provided any additional files (if any) needed for
further modification, offered a method for recipients to replace the
derived program with the original, and distributed under the same license,
I believe the service could likely have continued. It seems the operator
chose removal rather than implementing those compliance steps.

Accordingly, I don’t see this episode as bearing on whether the IPA Font
License v1.0 is “Open Source.” It looks like an operational compliance
issue around redistribution conditions, not a challenge to the license’s
status.

--
Shuji Sado

2025/9/8 7:32 Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org>:

> On 9/4/25 09:55, tdaskk at riseup.net wrote:
> > In March 2024, an incident occurred where the operator of a web service
> > converting IPA fonts licensed under the IPA Font License to WOFF format
> > received a warning from the IPA to discontinue the service.
> > In response, questions have arisen within the Japanese-speaking open-
> > source community about whether the IPA Font License fundamentally meets
> > the definition of open source.
>
> The IPA Font License pretty explicitly allows changes of format and
> redistribution.  Am I not understanding the case here?  What is IPA's
> objection?
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
>
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the
> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>


-- 
Shuji Sado
Chairman, Open Source Group Japan
https://opensource.jp/
https://shujisado.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20250917/37573119/attachment.htm>