Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 85106
Liberation fonts not distributable
Last modified: 2010-01-04 12:24:16 UTC
See this thread: http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg36584.html You are not allowed to put additional *restrictions* to the GPL. Allowing additional things is OK, but additional restrictions are not.. See also at the FSF (http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bulletin-001.html): "Another unusual provision -- that no additional restrictions beyond those in the GPL are permitted (Sec 6) -- accounts for most of the remaining violations. Corporate lawyers often like to wrap a whole distribution with an End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). Most of the time, such EULAs are incompatible with the GPL, as they attempt to trump the rights that the GPL protects."
@mh: please handle
@rene: can you please also add for the "normal" user, what the additional restrictions are. This would make the description complete.
According to the Debian legal thread linked: "2) As a further exception, any distribution of the object code of the Software in a physical product must provide you the right to access and modify the source code for the Software and to reinstall that modified version of the Software in object code form on the same physical product on which you received it. " at least. (That's the discussion point in the mentioned thread). Then "If Client makes a redistribution of a modified version of the Software, then Client must modify the files names [...]" is also one and RMS' opinion is clear on that, too (see the links in the thread, here again for completeness: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/05/msg00298.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/05/msg00303.html) looks like one, too...
CC:hr,rt
ad me to the cc list
added me to cc
accepting.
this is my view as a result with a discussion with rene on IRC: RedHat, the copyright holder of the Liberation fonts, have added restriction to the GPL v2 license. This is not consistent with the rules of FSF (may considered as license violation ). see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts#License_controversy as redhat is explictly naming openoffice in their announcement, I don't see a big problem to integrate those fonts for OpenOffice.org product, so I approve the integration. Rene and I agreed that we have a problem with that license as the OpenOffice.org source code can used for the Debian-free tree as is. I will contact the copyright holder to clarify the current situation for the OOo project and the "non-free" issue. please don't fill up these issue with comments and discussion, please let's use discuss@ooo for further discussion, this is then also more accessable for the non OOo world.
work on this issue is still ongoing, I'm lowering the prio to p2 to satisfy our rules for release (don't release with P1). We intend to follow the license of the licensor but also see that this license is not that consistent. I think it's up to RedHat and FSF to give clarification on this issue.
stripping down summary
update to version 1.04, which has been accepted by Debian maintainers should solve the problem. committed to mh30b.
set target to 3.0
Fix seems to be integrated for a long time. Close issue. Reopen it please if I overlooked something.