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Re: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff



I don't think that this is an issue. If it were, artwork produced using GIMP
would be GPL'ed and for sure, there is lots of art work on the WWW that 
that was produced using GIMP and it's not GPL'ed. After all of these years,
someone would have challenged it if they could. The GIMP web site talks about
this very issue and says that the GIMP is GPL'ed your art work made with 
GIMP is not and belongs to whoever made it.

The GPL'ed font thing is interesting. Even so, I have serious doubts regarding
documents produced with GPL'ed fonts being automatically GPL'ed. If this were
true, documents produced with MS fonts would be the property of MS and so
on and so forth. Further, fonts are used to express an idea on paper. They
had no hand in the originality of the thought (Or lack of originality...). 
Further, the use of a font in a document cannot be seen as a derived work 
of the font: The font never changed. The font only expressed the idea. Just 
like lines drawn with GIMP express the idea - they do not make the idea. A
font is a finished work - its a glyph that expresses a particular sound or 
sounds used in human speech (Regardless of language). If anything, a
font is a deriverative of a sound and/or sounds of a language used in human 
speech. 

The shape, lines, kerning and etc... of the font are what is copyrightable. 
Nothing more.

IMHO, whoever challenges the ownership of a document printed using GPL'ed 
fonts is going to get a severe spanking in the court room. Then again, this 
is a separate, but somewhat related topic regarding this thread.

Regards

Marvin 

 

>On Wednesday 26 January 2005 3:34 pm, Mario Klebsch wrote:
> Whe question to discuss here could be, wehter the artwork produced by
> PCB (Gerber-Files) or the board itself is subject to GPL. The artwork
> does indeed includes the symbols, which might be GPL'ed and when you
> make this artwork available to someone else, you would have to make
> your pcb files available, too. The artwork is a kind of compiler
> output.

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