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Bug 523678 - media-fonts/font-bh{,-lucidatypewriter}-{75,100}dpi: LICENSE should be public-domain
Summary: media-fonts/font-bh{,-lucidatypewriter}-{75,100}dpi: LICENSE should be public...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: [OLD] Library (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: Normal normal (vote)
Assignee: Licenses team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-09-25 08:08 UTC by Ulrich Müller
Modified: 2014-09-29 18:58 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Runtime testing required: ---

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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.