On japanese wikipedia, some had a discussion regarding copyright of fonts. I thought this is something I should share with people outside of japanese wikipedia.
Our projects are based on web sites, so we do not offer any fonts, probably. But when people print out articles, or a wikibook for distribution, do they have to use GFDL-compatible fonts?
My limited research indicates that fonts are protected by special law, copyright law, or some other intellectual property law in many countries. In Japan, it seems that the court have said that a font set is not a copyright work, but a work of industrial design.
What if we offer some info. via PDF files or pngs? I know there are WikiReader (print) and timeline (png with text) are coming out. Any tips for others for others who want to do similar projects?
regards,
Tomos
_________________________________________________________________ Learn to simplify your finances and your life in Streamline Your Life from MSN Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0405streamline.armx
On May 25, 2004, at 11:49 PM, Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
Our projects are based on web sites, so we do not offer any fonts, probably. But when people print out articles, or a wikibook for distribution, do they have to use GFDL-compatible fonts?
IANAL, but I would say, since the declaration of GFDL applies only to the content, it's just like printing anything else out for distribution. I'm inclined to say that users have the right to use fonts on their computers for free. That's probably covered under a license though. I'm fairly sure that Mac OS X users are granted an explicit license to royalty-free use of the included fonts. I don't know any details, though.
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org