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

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Levantovsky, Vladimir
<Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com> wrote:
> This section clearly defines the subject - *the Program* (which, is in
> this case, the web browser implementation) and the condition - "If you
> cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under
> this License and any other pertinent obligations ...". According to W3C
> RF policy, you have all necessary rights that are granted to you to
> implement *the Program* and to permit royalty-free redistribution of
> *the Program*. None of the conditions of the W3C patent license imposed
> on you would contradict the conditions of the GPL license, and would in
> any way limit your ability to distribute *the Program*.
>
> These patent rights may not be granted to someone who extracts pieces of
> the code from *the Program* and than uses it elsewhere in another
> program. According to the GPL license - "You are not responsible for
> enforcing compliance by third parties to this License." (GPL v.2,
> sec.6).

The Free Software Foundation's official position on the W3C's RF
policy can be found here:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html

Significant quote (there's a whole section on this, actually,
"Interaction with the GPL"):

"'Field of use' restrictions are also legally incompatible with
section 7 of the GNU General Public License, since it does not allow
the user's freedom to modify to be shrunk to zero in this way."

The FSF therefore appears to believe that its license would not permit
either Mozilla or WebKit to implement font compression technology
that's patented with field-of-use restrictions, as long as they would
like to continue to be distributed under the (L)GPL.

Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2008 17:36:13 UTC