RE: which license to use?

> Let's do a practical review first, ok?
> 
> (1), (1a) and (2) are effectively CC-NC-ND

OK, good so far.

> (3) and (3a) shouldn't be in a generic license. (4) is effectively
> useless in many jurisdictions too. (5) is either evil or useless.

So, instead of having 3/3a in the license to say "This doesn't apply to fonts X/Y/Z", you'd suggest having extra-license statement saying, "The ${mylicense} license applies to all my fonts except X/Y/Z"?  Since those forbidden fonts are not in the package anyway, those clauses seem superfluous in this cas, but I see what you're saying.

Clause 4 seems obvious to me: if you don't abide by the license, you no longer have license to use the licensed material. Break the terms of the agreement, and the agreement is off. But IANAL, so maybe something like that must still be stated.

I don't know if clause 5 is meant to imply that changes would work retroactively, or just that updated versions of the license may apply to future downloads. I can see how the former could really bite someone.

> Now for the specific case of a font license, I would strongly
> recomment studying two of the Open Source licenses:
> 
> http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont
> http://opensource.org/licenses/openfont

I'm pretty sure they're not meant to be Open Source fonts.  CC BY-NC-ND may be an option, if the "NC" part allows for commercial USE just not commercial DISTRIBUTION.  *skims creativecommons.org*  Seems this distinction is not covered. Hmmm...

> One important aspect to consider is that digital use of a font can be
> considered either a copy or a modified version (since it is only a
> subset of the original font). So a "no sell" clause would effectively
> prevent using the font in commercial documents. I don't know if this
> is the intention or not.

So you suggest something like the explicit grant of rights to create commercial products using the font, like the dbz-ttf-license has?


Tim

-- 
Tim Larson
App Admin, Intercall Production Services


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