Thank you very much for checking facts. (I think if there is more to be discussed on this copyright, it should be moved to debian-legal list.)
With your statement as presented, I had to concur with Branden. But I actually think this can be made into DFSG free package if you present copyright issues properly to the public with further documentation from Wakaba-san / Uchida-san. If there still remain any issues in some part of FONT, you can always remove those portions from package and replace them with the other PD fonts. If someone spend time in the future and provide patch to make them as homogeneous feel, that will make good FREE font set. As far as Uchida-san's portion is concerned, they are clearly PD. Big question is what did Mr. Wakaba used as the base of glyph. And how far modification later affected the total collection. If he started with then popular PC9800's ROM fonts with mere 16x16 bitmap fonts as starting point of making TT fonts, it may be well within fair use. This becomes more so, if heavy manual editing occurred to make these TT fonts to look homogeneous and legal shape. If he took these from TT MS fonts, maybe not. (Here I am talking complicated KANJI where 7 horizontal lines need to be identified within this small 16x16 bitmap space. It is equivalent of 8x8 in English) Documenting history of this font set and making them into clean set is the worthy cause. Following may be useful as a reference point for the copyright law. If I remember correctly, basic shape of glyph is not be copyrighted since it is common to all fonts and should be legible. Also for dot matrix fonts, mere coincident does not make a violation of copyright due to limited possibility of choice. Also note that, even with new copyright law, font itself is not covered by the copyright law in Japan. (Software is covered.) Japan has not verified WIPO 1997 treaty on this typeface thing either. (That is my web search result. IANAL.) I remember reading that ADOBE created postscript fonts in such a way that they can claim them as a "software" in which shape is programmed into a code. (This is to make sure they keep their right under most legal system.) So copyright of fonts are slightly different issue from ordinary software copyright in legal term. Regards, Osamu On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 12:22:46AM +0000, Takashi Okamoto wrote: > document were not remained yet. Mr. wakaba said "I think there is no > problem because I(wakaba) and Mr.UCHIDA remake a lot of glyphs and > nobody point out the problem up to now. But I can't guarantee it." -- ~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ + Osamu Aoki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, GnuPG-key: 1024D/D5DE453D + + Fingerprint: 814E BD64 3288 40E7 E88E 3D92 C3F8 EA94 D5DE 453D + + http://www.aokiconsulting.com/ Cupertino, CA USA +
