Re: Fonts (Was: CVS commit: xsrc/external/mit)

nia <[email protected]> Sun, 15 May 2022 09:00:34 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.devel.x11
Message-ID <YoDBMqWucoNieNr/@homeworld.netbsd.org>
On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 01:07:03AM +0300, Valery Ushakov wrote:
> http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/ seems to be a decent option for
> a bitmap font.  It's under SIL OFL, has good script coverage, a range
> of sizes and bold variant.  It's the 9front's default font.

I'm not sure SIL OFL is as good as a think as you suggest it is.
It's quite a restrictive license compared to our normal fare,
and it operates under the assumption that fonts are softare.

This is a neat legal trick invented by lawyers for TrueType
and scalable fonts, which use formats that are arguably turing
complete, but aren't programmed using anything close to a
conventional programming tool.

For bitmap fonts like Terminus, the case is much looser,
and I doubt many courts would accept that pictures of letters
are possible to license as software to avoid prior legal
understanding that designs of individual letters may not be
copyrighted.