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

Mikko Rantalainen <mikko.rantalainen@peda.net> wrote:
> 
> 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.

Yes.  (and replace "should allow" with "must allow").

> 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.

To the extent that this is the goal, yes, and that means such a target
is not compatible with freely licensed browsers.

zw

Received on Wednesday, 12 November 2008 16:38:52 UTC