On Tuesday 14 June 2005 12:16 pm, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote: > On 6/14/05, Marvin Dickens <marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > intended to be? There is no financial responseability whatsoever - Only > > effort and time. > > What kind of time requirements are we looking at? I'd love to help if I > can. Hello Samuel, Thanks for the interest! The repositories themselves still need to be set up, but thats pretty easy to do. What I was planning on doing was putting up a page that displays a png of the various foot prints and symbol (Or foot print / symbol family). The user would click on it to down load it. The other option would be to download all foot prints and/or all symbols as one tarball. Also, I traded emails with the licensing compliance engineer at FSF regarding licensing of footprints and symbols Here is a copy of the exchange of emails. My email to the FSF: From: Marvin Dickens <marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: licensing@xxxxxxx Subject: Fonts, symbols and footprints as related to gpl licensing exclusions Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 01:46:22 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200504210146.22645.marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Status: RO X-Status: RSC X-KMail-EncryptionState: X-KMail-SignatureState: X-KMail-MDN-Sent: Hello, I am a member of the scribus mailing list and further, through this list became aware of your recent correspondence Louis Desjardins <louis_desjardins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> regarding the issue of font licensing and the infection of documents by GPL licensed fonts. In fact, I was the person on the Scribus mailing list who started the thread regarding GPL'ed fonts and the font exclusion clause. I am writing you today not to discuss GPL font licensing, but to discuss the GPL licensing of symbols and footprints that are used in the gEDA project. The gEDA project is the GPL'ed electronic design suite located on the web at: http://www.geda.seul.org. The gEDA project *is* the defacto electronic design suite in free sofware. Symbols and footprints that are used in this project suffer from the *exact* malady as fonts: In short, gpl'ed symbols and footprints infect electronic layouts and schematics causing the works to be covered by the gpl. As an author of GPL'ed symbols and footprints, I can assure you that this was not my intention nor was it the intention of other authors. Currently, no GPL'ed symbols or footprints are used by anyone doing serious work. Everybody designs there own and some users share their footprints and symbols with other users. However, the number and variety of shared footprints and symbols are greatly limited. This is causing the following problems: 1.) gEDA cannot be taken seriously by users and/or businesses due to the lack of availability of symbols and footprints that do not infect schematics and layouts. 2.) gEDA cannot grow a user base without an abundance of usable footprints and symbols. Commercial products will look better to potential users due to the lack of available footprints and symbols. 3.) The community is being forced to use and/or design other licenses soley for symbols and footprints. I could drone on. But, if you insert the word font in the place of the words footprints or symbols you see the problem. I request that your office add an addendum to the gpl to address the issue of symbols and footprints. In fact, I suggest that the font exclusion clause be used with the exception that everywhere in the font exclusion clause where the word "font" appears, it is substituted with symbol and footprint. In the event you need more information or input regarding this issue from the gEDA community, please let me know and I can have a *great* many users contact you and your office (Including developers). Or if you prefer, email the gEDA user list directly and I am sure the response will be overwhelming. I personally appreciate the efforts of your office as well as the results that have been realized through the years. As a user of free software I highly value the work that you all do. Best regards Marvin Dickens Alpharetta, Georgia USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The response from the FSF to my email: Return-Path: <www-data@xxxxxxx> Received: from ibm25aec.bellsouth.net ([199.232.76.167]) by imf06aec.mail.bellsouth.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.13 201-253-122-130-113-20050324) with ESMTP id <20050427222332.FRS5387.imf06aec.mail.bellsouth.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> for <marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:23:32 -0400 Received: from rt.gnu.org ([199.232.76.167]) by ibm25aec.bellsouth.net (InterMail vG.1.02.00.01 201-2136-104-101-20040929) with ESMTP id <20050427222332.RZID6160.ibm25aec.bellsouth.net@xxxxxxxxxx> for <marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:23:32 -0400 Received: from www-data by rt.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1DQuwm-0000um-DA for marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:23:56 -0400 Subject: [gnu.org #232872] Fonts, symbols and footprints as related to gpl licensing exclusions From: "Dave Turner via RT" <licensing@xxxxxxx> Reply-To: licensing@xxxxxxx In-Reply-To: <rt-232872@xxxxxxx> Message-ID: <rt-3.0.11-232872-763923.5.1382370792934@xxxxxxxxxx> Precedence: bulk X-RT-Loop-Prevention: gnu.org RT-Ticket: gnu.org #232872 Managed-by: RT 3.0.11 (http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/) RT-Originator: novalis@xxxxxxx To: marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" X-RT-Original-Encoding: utf-8 Sender: www-data <www-data@xxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:23:56 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: RC X-KMail-EncryptionState: N X-KMail-SignatureState: N X-KMail-MDN-Sent: > [marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Wed Apr 27 16:53:04 2005]: > Symbols and footprints that are used in this project suffer from the > *exact* malady as fonts: In short, gpl'ed symbols and footprints > infect electronic layouts and schematics causing the works to be > covered by the gpl. As an author of GPL'ed symbols and footprints, I > can assure you that this was not my intention nor was it the intention > of other authors. <snip> > I could drone on. But, if you insert the word font in the place of the > words footprints or symbols you see the problem. I request that your > office add an addendum to the gpl to address the issue of symbols and > footprints. In fact, I suggest that the font exclusion clause be used > with the exception that everywhere in the font exclusion clause where > the word "font" appears, it is substituted with symbol and footprint. Yep, this is definitely something we've considered. I'm not thrilled about changing the font exception globally since (a) it's experimental anyway, and (b) the words "footprints" and "symbols" have different meanings in different contexts, and we don't want to risk being overbroad. I recall one case in which a license intended for software which discussed "linking" was applied to HTML documentation, leading to absurd results when read by people familiar with HTML. Certainly, "symbols" has all sorts of computer-science meanings. But if you're interested in using a modified version of the exception for your symbols and footprints, please feel free to go ahead. Let us know how you find it working in the real world. -- -Dave "Novalis" Turner GPL Compliance Engineer Free Software Foundation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As you can see from this email exchange, the FSF is unhappy with the unintended result of infecting documents and files with the gpl'ed fonts, symbols and footprints. The free-for-any-use-license at gedasymbols.org needs to be updated to reflect this exchange. If you are still interested, email me off list. ] Best regards Marvin Dickens Alpharetta, Georgia USA
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