From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 18:19:10 EST
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Philippe Verdy [mailto:verdy_p@wanadoo.fr]
Envoye : jeudi 4 decembre 2003 00:15
A : John Hudson
Objet : RE: Free Fonts
John Hudson writes:
> At 10:08 AM 12/3/2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>
> >Simple: for now the fonts are in beta, and do not include the hinting
> >instructions. This may be in development, but faces some legal issues
> >with Apple patents. So until there's a patent-free hinting mechanism,
> >for use in fonts, or Apple agrees with a royaltee-free license on
> >hinting mechanisms, hinted fonts cannot be freely distributed.
>
> Sorry, but you really do not know what you are talking about. What cannot
> be freely distributed are *rasterisers* that make use of Apple patented
> technology that interpret TT instruction sets. Anyone can make, hint and
> ship -- freely or for a licensing fee -- a font with a full set of hint
> instructions. What you cannot do is build a rasteriser that interprets
> these hints without licensing the technology from Apple.
This does not seem clear when you look at the claims of the 3 Apple patents:
the term "rasterizer" is not even used, and what is patented to the method
to represent these hints. So, unless Apple publishes a legal disclaimer
about what is really patented, I do think that the situation is quite
ambiguous, and even creating a hinted font or creating a tool that allow
making such hinting in a font design may require a license to use the
hinting method.
I do think it is dangerous for an open-sourced project to assume that it is
possible to hint a font that should be freely distributed, as the project
itself gets no money to pay the distribution licenses.
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