571579 - ScheherazadeRegAAT font licensing

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(mozilla.org :: Licensing, task)

Description

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

layout/reftests/fonts/sil/ScheherazadeRegAAT-license.txt
provides the terms for the Scherazade* fonts in the same directory. The
freeware license states:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ArabicFonts_Download

Freeware License

License

The following fonts are the property of SIL International. They are
distributed as copyrighted freeware. You may use this software without
any charge and may distribute it, as is, to others. Commercial
distribution of this software is restricted without prior written
permission. If you wish to distribute this software commercially,
contact SIL for details on obtaining a license. You may not rent or
lease the software, nor may you modify, adapt, translate, reverse
engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software. You may not make
derivative fonts from this software. THE SOFTWARE AND RELATED FILES ARE
PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.


This license looks problematic.
There are traces that the license changed to an OSI approved one meanwhile.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Version 1.001 of the fonts are identical to version 1.0, except that they are released under the OFL:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ArabicFonts_Download

It would be good if someone could update our copy to have the correct licensing information.

/layout/reftests/fonts/sil/ScheherazadeRegAAT-license.txt is the only one which needs updating; the other two are correct already.

Gerv

Comment 2

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

What's needed to drive this forward?

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Anyone with the ability to check in to the tree can change the file over.

Gerv

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Assigning to Wolfgang - I hope you can sort this out for us :-)

Gerv

Comment 5

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

Since from the website it was not clear to me if the AAT font is or will be relicensed I've asked sil.org what the status is.

The answer was:
---
The ScheherazadeRegAAT font has unfortunately never been released under the OFL license and there are no plans to do so. It is still under our "Freeware License".  The current release of Scheherazade (OpenType) is released under OFL. The next release of Scheherazade will have Graphite and OpenType (but not AAT). We have no plans to release another version with AAT.
---

So IANAL but distributing this font in the source tarball can be a copyright issue for commercial entities and should be avoided.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Hmm. We do have contacts who know people in SIL. We can ask them to find whether this is just "don't bother us, we're busy" or "there are serious legal problems with doing what you request". After all, if they have the ability to issue commercial licenses (see text above), then they should probably have the ability to release exactly the same bits under the OFL. We aren't asking for the font to be updated or changed, after all.

What are we currently using this font for? Is there a suitable free replacement, or is it rather unique?

Gerv

Comment 7

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

(In reply to Gervase Markham [:gerv] from comment #6)
> Hmm. We do have contacts who know people in SIL. We can ask them to find
> whether this is just "don't bother us, we're busy" or "there are serious
> legal problems with doing what you request". After all, if they have the
> ability to issue commercial licenses (see text above), then they should
> probably have the ability to release exactly the same bits under the OFL. We
> aren't asking for the font to be updated or changed, after all.

Right. Looks like an easy thing but what do I know. (I'll forward their mail to you via PM)

> What are we currently using this font for? Is there a suitable free
> replacement, or is it rather unique?

I'm no font expert but CCed John who first committed the font reftests including the SIL fonts.

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

jdaggett: are you able to answer the questions at the end of comment 6?

Gerv

Comment 9

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

Given that this is Jonathan Kew's font, I'll let him answer these questions... ;)

Comment 10

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to Gervase Markham [:gerv] from comment #6)
> Hmm. We do have contacts who know people in SIL. We can ask them to find
> whether this is just "don't bother us, we're busy" or "there are serious
> legal problems with doing what you request". After all, if they have the
> ability to issue commercial licenses (see text above), then they should
> probably have the ability to release exactly the same bits under the OFL. We
> aren't asking for the font to be updated or changed, after all.

"don't bother us, we're busy".

It wouldn't be exactly the same bits, because the license (or at least a reference to it) is embedded within the font file.

So re-releasing under a new license is a non-trivial amount of work to rebuild the binary font file and test that it is done correctly - and (understandably) nobody wants to spend the time and effort to do that for something of such marginal value.

> What are we currently using this font for?

Nothing, AFAICT.

It looks like John originally landed the font file along with the layout/reftests/font-face/src-format-arabic* testcases (in be12595f2d01, bug ?????? - I didn't find a bugzilla reference for this) but then completely disabled the test in bug 493976, and that's how it has been for the last 4 years.

Moreover, since we integrated the OTS sanitizer, AAT shaping is not even -expected- to work for downloaded fonts, since OTS will strip the AAT layout tables. So AAT shaping is only an option for installed platform fonts, not for downloaded resources.

There's also a reference to the font from layout/reftests/bugs/404149-1.xul, via a link to silfonts.css; however, I don't believe the AAT version in particular is important to that test - especially given that OTS will be stripping its AAT tables anyway!

In short: we can just remove it.

Comment 11

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Attachment: remove unused ScheherazadeRegAAT.ttf font file from the tree

Comment 12

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/c8069eb3a875

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c8069eb3a875