Re: My solution of webfonts problem

> Read the Microsoft Office EULA. Fonts are included. Read the Vista EULA. 
> Fonts are included.

This is precisely my point, if the Office EULA covers these fonts the license data stored in the font contradicts this!  

In fact, the Mac Office 2004 EULA makes no mention whatsoever of fonts specifically:

http://download.microsoft.com/documents/useterms/Office%20for%20Mac%20Standard_2004_English_69b707dd-4274-4849-9990-4635d5cc13d7.pdf

The same is also true for Windows XP, there is no specific mention of fonts in the license.  The Mac OS X license from Apple mentions fonts but only to say that they are licensed, not sold.  Both Vista and Mac Office 2008 ship with a EULA that mentions fonts, "you may only embed fonts in content as permitted by the embedding restrictions in the fonts".  Nothing about whether the EULA terms override the license terms described in the font data itself.

It's one thing to wish that font data was consistent with EULA terms in a simple and easy to understand way but in practice I think that's far from being the case.  The conditions font designers impose are often complex and the sublicensing terms that apply are hard to fathom, as the EULA's described above plainly illustrate.

Cheers,

John

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of John Daggett
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 9:51 AM
To: Paul Nelson (ATC)
Cc: www-style; Dave Crossland; freyjkell@gmail.com
Subject: Re: My solution of webfonts problem



> Having the UA be able to save the fonts will be an interesting idea.

Note that Safari 3.1 already implements this:

http://webkit.org/blog/148/web-inspector-update/

> Doing so would have some legal implications for the UA to have access
> to the font EULA so the font software (yes, fonts are classified as software!)
> to be installed. We should also expose "click" to purchase capabilities to
> allow people to be honest if the font is a commercial font.

I think this is only practical if the license data within fonts accurately reflects the EULA that applies to those fonts.  When Microsoft ships Office, are the fonts that ship with it covered by a Microsoft EULA?  A font vendor EULA?

Consider a simple example.  Mac Office 2004 ships with a Monotype font "Century Schoolbook".  The license records in the name table of the font indicate that a Monotype license applies, not a Microsoft  license.  Digging around for the license URL, I found Monotype standard EULA:

  http://www.fonts.com/Legal/MI-EULA.htm

Section 12 specifically prohibits commercial use of the font embedded in a document without an additional license.  Yet the embedding bits of the font are set to print/preview (fsType field of the OS/2 table), meaning that Microsoft EOT tools would happily produce an EOT font from this font even though it would violate the terms of the EULA for commerical use.

And what exactly is the font EULA that applies to fonts shipped with OS's?  Apple ships Mac OS X with a full set of beautifully designed fonts, but it's difficult to determine what license applies to them, there's nothing specific about them in the general OS license.  I'm sure it must fall under some "third-party software" clause but this doesn't really help answer directly "what's the license that applies to this font?"

User agents could ship with features that enabled the font license to be viewed but it wouldn't really mean much unless software vendors that ship fonts make a more concerted effort to document the licensing terms that apply to the fonts that they ship.

Regards,

John Daggett
Mozilla Japan

Received on Monday, 21 April 2008 05:23:52 UTC