Re: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote:
> - What is the criteria that is used, or the distinction that you make,
> when the decision is made whether a particular technology contributed
> under W3C RF license can or can not be implemented under GPL license? 
> 
> I am trying to understand what, if anything, can be done to make the
> font compression technology and relevant essential claims compatible
> with GPL terms, and I'd really appreciate your help.

If I've understood correctly, a patent licence without field-of-use
restriction would specifically *allow* taking a GPL'd web browser that
supports compressed fonts, then remove all parts from its source code
except the part that locates/downloads the compressed font and the part
that decompresses that downloaded font. Then it should still allow
modifying the resulting source so that the user could store the
decompressed font.

That is, such patent license should allow taking the existing GPL'd code
and turning that into a software that's only purpose is to search and
download any compressed fonts from a given web site and store those
fonts on the harddrive without compression.

If the target is to protect fonts with the compression patent (that is,
make it illegal to decompress the font for any other purpose but to
render in web browser or equivalent), then I believe that GPL is not
compatible with such a target.

But then, I'm not a lawyer.

-- 
Mikko