[webkit-dev] SIL Open Font License and WebKit

[Maciej Stachowiak]

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

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