SIL Open Font License and WebKit
We have a licensing issue we need to address for MathML. We need the STIX fonts as they will provide consistent rendering for Mathematics. I highly suspect these fonts will find themselves on our desktops somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, we need them for our testing infrastructure to actually work across all the platforms. The STIX Fonts are available under the SIL Open Font License: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web You can see the patch that adds these fonts here: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961 I think we need to adjust our licensing policy to include font licenses like the above. It is unlikely that the STIX consortium will change their font licensing. In reality, they don't need to do so. The font license is intended to support "open source" fonts. -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
A little web searching produced: It's OSI approved: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/openfont.html GNU thinks it's OK, albeit having an "unusual requirement": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts Fedora recommended: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Font_Licenses It would appear to be "the font license". -eric On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> wrote:
We have a licensing issue we need to address for MathML. We need the STIX fonts as they will provide consistent rendering for Mathematics. I highly suspect these fonts will find themselves on our desktops somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, we need them for our testing infrastructure to actually work across all the platforms.
The STIX Fonts are available under the SIL Open Font License:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
You can see the patch that adds these fonts here:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961
I think we need to adjust our licensing policy to include font licenses like the above. It is unlikely that the STIX consortium will change their font licensing. In reality, they don't need to do so. The font license is intended to support "open source" fonts.
-- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered."
Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
So, it sounds reasonable to use that license for fonts needed in the WebKit project. If nobody has objections, an update of the WebKit licensing policy and a review of the patch [1] including fonts under that license (for MathML) would be great! François Sausset [1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961 Le 16 juil. 2010 à 18:05, Eric Seidel a écrit :
A little web searching produced:
It's OSI approved: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/openfont.html
GNU thinks it's OK, albeit having an "unusual requirement": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts
Fedora recommended: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Font_Licenses
It would appear to be "the font license".
-eric
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> wrote:
We have a licensing issue we need to address for MathML. We need the STIX fonts as they will provide consistent rendering for Mathematics. I highly suspect these fonts will find themselves on our desktops somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, we need them for our testing infrastructure to actually work across all the platforms.
The STIX Fonts are available under the SIL Open Font License:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
You can see the patch that adds these fonts here:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961
I think we need to adjust our licensing policy to include font licenses like the above. It is unlikely that the STIX consortium will change their font licensing. In reality, they don't need to do so. The font license is intended to support "open source" fonts.
-- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered."
Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
_______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
Apple's legal department would strongly prefer for WebKit's license terms to remain simple. We prefer everything to be licensed under LGPL or BSD terms, or at the very least a license which is clearly compatible with LGPL and BSD. Is this license LGPL-compatible for cases where the fonts are embedded as data in software? For support material that has unusual license terms, another possibility is to have WebKit's support scripts automatically download it, rather than checking it directly into the repository. Regards, Maciej On Jul 16, 2010, at 8:05 AM, Eric Seidel wrote:
A little web searching produced:
It's OSI approved: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/openfont.html
GNU thinks it's OK, albeit having an "unusual requirement": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts
Fedora recommended: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Font_Licenses
It would appear to be "the font license".
-eric
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> wrote:
We have a licensing issue we need to address for MathML. We need the STIX fonts as they will provide consistent rendering for Mathematics. I highly suspect these fonts will find themselves on our desktops somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, we need them for our testing infrastructure to actually work across all the platforms.
The STIX Fonts are available under the SIL Open Font License:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
You can see the patch that adds these fonts here:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961
I think we need to adjust our licensing policy to include font licenses like the above. It is unlikely that the STIX consortium will change their font licensing. In reality, they don't need to do so. The font license is intended to support "open source" fonts.
-- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered."
Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
_______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
Le 19 juil. 2010 à 21:04, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
Apple's legal department would strongly prefer for WebKit's license terms to remain simple. We prefer everything to be licensed under LGPL or BSD terms, or at the very least a license which is clearly compatible with LGPL and BSD. Is this license LGPL-compatible for cases where the fonts are embedded as data in software?
See answers 1.4 to 1.7 in the following official FAQ of the license: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL-FAQ_web It is compatible. And as the font is only used by DumpRenderTree for tests, the WebKit API by itself does not need it at all. So, Safari, Chrome/Chromium, etc need to include neither the font, nor the license.
For support material that has unusual license terms, another possibility is to have WebKit's support scripts automatically download it, rather than checking it directly into the repository.
CSS font-face could be a workaround but a persistent location should be found (and I suppose WebKit website has the same licensing issues?). And with that solution MathML layout tests could not be run without a network connection. François Sausset
Regards, Maciej
On Jul 16, 2010, at 8:05 AM, Eric Seidel wrote:
A little web searching produced:
It's OSI approved: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/openfont.html
GNU thinks it's OK, albeit having an "unusual requirement": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts
Fedora recommended: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Font_Licenses
It would appear to be "the font license".
-eric
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> wrote:
We have a licensing issue we need to address for MathML. We need the STIX fonts as they will provide consistent rendering for Mathematics. I highly suspect these fonts will find themselves on our desktops somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, we need them for our testing infrastructure to actually work across all the platforms.
The STIX Fonts are available under the SIL Open Font License:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL_web
You can see the patch that adds these fonts here:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41961
I think we need to adjust our licensing policy to include font licenses like the above. It is unlikely that the STIX consortium will change their font licensing. In reality, they don't need to do so. The font license is intended to support "open source" fonts.
-- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered."
Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
_______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
_______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
On Jul 19, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Sausset François wrote:
Le 19 juil. 2010 à 21:04, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
Apple's legal department would strongly prefer for WebKit's license terms to remain simple. We prefer everything to be licensed under LGPL or BSD terms, or at the very least a license which is clearly compatible with LGPL and BSD. Is this license LGPL-compatible for cases where the fonts are embedded as data in software?
See answers 1.4 to 1.7 in the following official FAQ of the license: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OFL-FAQ_web It is compatible.
I don't see a claim that the font is LGPL-compatible when embedded in a program. The FSF discussion of this license doesn't say, unfortunately.
And as the font is only used by DumpRenderTree for tests, the WebKit API by itself does not need it at all. So, Safari, Chrome/Chromium, etc need to include neither the font, nor the license.
Good point. However, at least some versions of DumpRenderTree build with test fonts embedded directly into the binary.
For support material that has unusual license terms, another possibility is to have WebKit's support scripts automatically download it, rather than checking it directly into the repository.
CSS font-face could be a workaround but a persistent location should be found (and I suppose WebKit website has the same licensing issues?). And with that solution MathML layout tests could not be run without a network connection.
I'm not suggesting WebFonts. Rather, the fonts could be downloaded on demand when running the tests if not present, the way we do with some Python modules. Regards, Maciej
Le 19 juil. 2010 à 21:56, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
Good point. However, at least some versions of DumpRenderTree build with test fonts embedded directly into the binary.
I'm not suggesting WebFonts. Rather, the fonts could be downloaded on demand when running the tests if not present, the way we do with some Python modules.
Unfortunately, the latter solution does not solve the problem of fonts embedded in binaries, as you said. François
If we want to put the STIX fonts up somewhere to be downloaded, where would that be if it can't be in subversion? I think we'd just have a couple of the font files up for download. We can't really download the from stixfonts.org. Of course, we'd have to include some "program" for download as well. :) -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Darin Adler <darin@apple.com> wrote:
On Jul 20, 2010, at 4:39 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
We can't really download them from stixfonts.org.
Why?
Well, because the zip file is behind a form that requires you to "accept" the license. It doesn't seem right to try to hack our way through that form to run tests. Besides, some organization should accept the terms of the license and the responsibility for distributing this font to test systems (or developers running tests). -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
Again, maybe something like http://gitorious.org/qtwebkit/testfonts as QtWebKit does for the exactly same propose? On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Darin Adler <darin@apple.com> wrote:
On Jul 20, 2010, at 4:39 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
We can't really download them from stixfonts.org.
Why?
Well, because the zip file is behind a form that requires you to "accept" the license. It doesn't seem right to try to hack our way through that form to run tests. Besides, some organization should accept the terms of the license and the responsibility for distributing this font to test systems (or developers running tests).
-- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered."
Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
-- --Antonio Gomes
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Antonio Gomes (:tonikitoo) <tonikitoo@gmail.com> wrote:
Again, maybe something like http://gitorious.org/qtwebkit/testfonts as QtWebKit does for the exactly same propose?
Maybe I missed this somewhere in the discussion. Sure. That looks like an option. Are there the same licensing snags with these fonts as we have with the STIX fonts? -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
Le 20 juil. 2010 à 18:30, Antonio Gomes (:tonikitoo) a écrit :
Again, maybe something like http://gitorious.org/qtwebkit/testfonts as QtWebKit does for the exactly same propose?
But, with that method, fonts should be locally included on all test machines and as MathML implementation should be testable on all platforms, all build bots should include them locally. And I'm not sure it could be possible. Perhaps the build bots maintainers could answer? Once again, it does not solve the license problem when fonts are included in the DumpRenderTree binary as Maciej Stachowiak said. I think that CSS font-face is right now the only clean workaround for licensing issues. And, as Alex said, we have to find a persistent location for the fonts. François Sausset
On Jul 20, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
some organization should accept the terms of the license and the responsibility for distributing this font to test systems (or developers running tests).
Some organization? You lost me there. Isn’t the STI Pub Companies an organization? -- Darin
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Darin Adler <darin@apple.com> wrote:
On Jul 20, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
some organization should accept the terms of the license and the responsibility for distributing this font to test systems (or developers running tests).
Some organization? You lost me there. Isn’t the STI Pub Companies an organization?
They're the licensor we're the "user" accepting the right to use the artifact. An automated program can't legally "accept" a license. An organization can ... All I'm saying is that I don't think the STIX folks would appreciate us hacking our way through their license acceptance form just to download the fonts. Someone should download them from stixfonts.org, accepting their license, and make them available for our purposes. My question is where do I put them if I can't check them into subversion? -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
On Jul 20, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Darin Adler <darin@apple.com> wrote:
On Jul 20, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Alex Milowski wrote:
some organization should accept the terms of the license and the responsibility for distributing this font to test systems (or developers running tests).
Some organization? You lost me there. Isn’t the STI Pub Companies an organization?
They're the licensor we're the "user" accepting the right to use the artifact.
In my opinion, we, the WebKit project as a whole, are not users. It’s the people who are making use of WebKit, building it or testing it or possibly incorporating it into a product, that are the users. I don’t think the WebKit project can accept the terms of the license. Anyway, if the real question is finding a server to post the fonts on, then I think you just have to satisfy whoever runs the server that they have the right to post them. -- Darin
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Darin Adler <darin@apple.com> wrote:
In my opinion, we, the WebKit project as a whole, are not users. It’s the people who are making use of WebKit, building it or testing it or possibly incorporating it into a product, that are the users. I don’t think the WebKit project can accept the terms of the license.
In that interpretation, we'd need to have anyone who runs the webkit tests for MathML install the STIX fonts ... somehow. They'd have to download and at least put them in a known location. I'm not sure if that is an acceptable solution for the whole WebKit project.
Anyway, if the real question is finding a server to post the fonts on, then I think you just have to satisfy whoever runs the server that they have the right to post them.
That's the way I was leaning. The only issue is who has the resources to provide a reliable server for the size of our development community? I don't personally have one that I can offer. -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:58 PM, Zoltan Herczeg <zherczeg@inf.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
We can't really download them from stixfonts.org.
Alex, wouldn't be possible to contact them and ask some help? Maybe they could offer us an acceptable solution.
I can try but as a consortium of mostly user organizations, I'm not certain who'd respond. -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
Hi all, I'm working on a bug concerning xHeight() for fonts without an "x" glyph: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41535 I spotted it on the mac platform with "Apple Symbols" font, but other platforms could also be affected: a lot of platforms are making a guess of 0.56 * ascent() for xHeight when no "x" glyph exists, but it is probably erroneous and should be 2/3. Thus I need some volunteers to test the following layout test on other platforms: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=66398 The green square should stay properly aligned even when zooming and STIX fonts should be disabled if installed. This test is perhaps not sufficient to spot the problem as it uses MathML that is not enabled on all platforms and it uses CSS declaration "Symbol" for font that then differs on each platform. For instance, "Apple Symbols" font is used on the mac platform. I don't know for other platforms. If some people have time to test it on different platforms (apart from the mac one) with a font without a "x" glyph, it would be great! François Sausset
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 7:04 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
Apple's legal department would strongly prefer for WebKit's license terms to remain simple. We prefer everything to be licensed under LGPL or BSD terms, or at the very least a license which is clearly compatible with LGPL and BSD. Is this license LGPL-compatible for cases where the fonts are embedded as data in software?
For support material that has unusual license terms, another possibility is to have WebKit's support scripts automatically download it, rather than checking it directly into the repository.
The SIL Open Font License isn't unusual. The STIX fonts were developed specifically for the purpose of supporting the display of Mathematics. Certainly, a user can easily change the fonts via CSS and then their experience may vary depending on the unicode characters they use and whether there are glyphs for those characters given their choices. We'd be foolish not to rely upon them for proper and consistent rendering. I'm not certain where to go from here. We can make the tests work in a number of ways to avoid checking in the actual fonts. We can't fix the problem that the STIX fonts were developed to overcome without doing that ourselves. Maybe the Apple legal folks need to talk with the Scientific and Technical Information Exchange (STIX) folks [1], or the American Institute of Physic [2], or the ACS [3], or the AMS [4] or the IEEE [5] or the APS [6], or Elsevier [7] and decide on a way forward. It wasn't developed in a vacuum and was meant for the purpose for which we are using it [1] http://www.stixfonts.org/ [2] http://www.aip.org/ [3] http://www.chemistry.org/ [4] http://www.ams.org/ [5] http://www.ieee.org/ [6] http://www.aps.org/ [7] http://www.elsevier.com/ -- --Alex Milowski "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language considered." Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
participants (8)
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Alex Milowski
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Antonio Gomes (:tonikitoo)
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Darin Adler
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Eric Seidel
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François Sausset
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Maciej Stachowiak
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Sausset François
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Zoltan Herczeg