Re: New work on fonts at W3C

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Mikko
Rantalainen<mikko.rantalainen@peda.net> wrote:
> Also note that because Gecko (Mozilla Firefox) and WebKit (Apple Safari,
> Google Chrome) are licensed under GPL those rendering engines cannot
> implement a patent encumbered font format. And if a license is granted
> for Gecko and WebKit, such license is automatically applicable to any
> derivative work (licensed under GPL) of Gecko or WebKit, especially a
> piece of software which only purpose is to download any EOT wrapped font
> file and install it as a system font.

1) Google's support for H.264 in Chrome suggests they don't buy this
interpretation to begin with (AFAICT, IANAL).

2) Both Gecko and WebKit are licensed under the LGPL (inter alia), not
only the GPL.  The LGPL permits linking to proprietary code, including
code implementing patented algorithms, according to what I understand.
 The portion that actually implements the decoding could be licensed
under BSD, or LGPL with a special exception, and just linked with the
LGPL code.

3) But the legalities are moot because Mozilla has said they won't
ship patented formats regardless of whether they can do so legally,
and there's no point in going forward with a format without support
from Mozilla.

4) And they're doubly moot because Monotype has said they'd be willing
to give a royalty-free patent license with no field-of-use
restrictions.

Received on Monday, 22 June 2009 20:27:26 UTC