Re: Pingus font found!!!

[Gervase Lam]

> From: Andy Balaam
> Subject: Re: Pingus font found!!!
> Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:13:19 +0100

> By the way, you should make it clear that if he allows it to be
> distributed under the GPL, he is implicitly allowing it to be used in a 
> commercial context.

What do you mean by this?  Pingus is a piece of software where absolutely 
no charge is made to obtain and use the software.

However, I (now) understand that the levying of charges for GPL items is 
allowed.  Then, in this regard, there is a commercial context.

Let's assume that Pingus is like a "normal" fully commercial piece of 
software.  In other words, it is not bound by GPL.  He could sub-licence 
the the font to us with his own licencing agreement of how the font can be 
used.

However, he can sort of do this anyway with GPL.  Directly for v2 June 
1991 of GPL:

"...If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the 
Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works 
in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those 
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you 
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on 
the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this 
License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, 
and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."

In other words, if the font is a part of Pingus, it is bound in GPL.  
However, if somebody extracts the font from Pingus in any way, he can put 
in his own terms and conditions of its use.

There is also the fact that the font in Pingus is more limited than in the 
TTF format.  In TTF format, the font is easily scalable and is only in 
black and white.  In Pingus, the font is in PNG format, and is therefore 
not so scalable, which makes it of more limited use to other people.  The 
font has also been coloured.  Therefore, the font isn't the original font.

While writing this post, I needed to refer to his 'licence' in detail.  It 
mentions:

"GreyWolf WebWorks Free Fonts (and versions previously released as
DarkSide's Free Fonts) are FREE for personal use. They do, however,
remain the property of Rich Gast and GreyWolf WebWorks. They are not
in the public domain.

Commercial use in any manner, including (but not limited to) use in
advertising or corporate logo design, inclusion in any software,
archive, collection or library for distribution to the public which
either directly or indirectly generates income for the distributor
requires written permission from the author..."

May be I should have read this properly before writing this post.  The 
keyword in the last paragraph is income.  No income is being generated 
from Pingus.  Therefore, according to that, it is OK.

The first paragraph got me for a moment.  The font can remain as his 
property in Pingus.  Also, because Pingus is bound by GPL, it cannot be in 
the Public Domain.

For one or two more finer details, I would recommend you download the font 
and read the terms and conditions yourselves.

Thanks,
Gervase.

PS. Ingo, for the record, so that we don't have to go through all of this 
again, what is the blackboard font that is used during the tutorial 
called?  What type of licence does it have?  I think the only other font 
that Pingus uses is courier.  If somebody complains about that, then that 
should be very easy to change.

PPS. I am not surprised that I've hardly read the GPL whenever I have used 
GPL software!

PPPS.  I have not been getting any digest Pingus e-mails since 14th July.  
I've checked on the mailing list web site, and mailing out the list to me 
seems to be enabled already.  How do I find out when the next mailing will 
be triggered?  Btw, I have been reading the recent posts via the web site.