[Scribus] font management

[Craig Ringer]

On Sun, 2005-04-17 at 14:53 -0400, Louis Desjardins wrote:

> If there will be an advice, I think it should be made clear to which 
> font family it applies. Otherwise it's going to be really complicated 
> for everyone to find out when GPL applies to a font.

Agreed. I've added a reference to the GPL FAQ entry to the UnFonts
listing on the wiki font page. There aren't any others listed there that
I know are GPL. It's definitely something to watch out for though.

> I think it's 
> only confusing and it should be clarified by the people responsible 
> for the GPL. At the same time, are there lots of fonts known to be 
> released under the GPL? In other words, is it a theoretical issue or 
> a real-life issue?

At least UnFonts, and I think I've seen others.

> Like I said, it needs clarification.

The problem is that the FSF can't just "fix" the GPL. For one thing,
adding explicit clauses for various applications would be the road to
madness - where do you stop? There's also the issue that while some font
authors may not have known about this restriction, others may have - and
the FSF would be justifiably unwilling to wipe out their licensing
intent with a revision of the license. 

On the flip side, I rather doubt even the FSF are willing to explicitly
"clarify" that "all your documents are belong to us." (sorry!). Thus we
find ourselves the present situation, which as alluded to by Marvin may
well be an intentional lack of clarity.

--
Craig Ringer