Bug 523678

Summary:	media-fonts/font-bh{,-lucidatypewriter}-{75,100}dpi: LICENSE should be public-domain
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Ulrich Müller <ulm>
Component:	[OLD] Library	Assignee:	Licenses team <licenses>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	x11
Priority:	Normal
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
See Also:	http://bugs.debian.org/173529
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Ulrich Müller gentoo-dev

2014-09-25 08:08:26 UTC

The ebuilds' license labels were recently changed from "MIT" (which was wrong indeed) to "bh-lucida".

However, the legal notice in bh-lucida refers only to the fonts' source code (for which it doesn't even grant the right to copy or redistribute), but not to the bitmapped fonts.

AFAICS, bitmapped fonts are not copyrightable in the U.S., so these packages should be labelled as "public-domain".

Disclaimer: IANAL, TINLA.

References:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=173529
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces

Comment 1 Ulrich Müller gentoo-dev

2014-09-25 10:50:21 UTC

Discussion in debian-legal ML (from 2002): https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/12/msg00282.html

Comment 2 Ulrich Müller gentoo-dev

2014-09-29 18:58:07 UTC

Fixed.