[Freepats] Re: GPL for sound samples

[Mark Constable]

On Saturday 15 April 2006 11:09, Marcos Guglielmetti Gmail wrote:
> RMS comments:
> Maybe we could help you develop a license that is free and does what
> you need.  To the extent that a soundfont is like a font, maybe
> something like the Open Font License would do the job.  See
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html for a link to that.

And in following through I notice that here is the text of the
original freepats exemption clause, from the FAQ...

 The GNU GPL *can* be used for fonts. However, note that
 it does not permit embedding the font in a document unless
 that document is also licensed under the GPL. If you want
 to allow this, use the font exception. 

 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException

And this could be the Font license referred to...

 SIL Open Font License 1.0 - http://scripts.sil.org/OFL

 The Open Font License is a Free copyleft license for fonts. Its
 only unusual requirement is that fonts be distributed with some
 computer program, rather than alone. Since a simple Hello World
 program will satisfy the requirement, it is harmless. Neither
 we nor SIL recommend the use of this license for anything other
 than fonts.

The important parts of this license are below...

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify,
redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font
Software, subject to the following conditions:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components,
in Standard or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Standard or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled,
redistributed and sold with any software, provided that each copy
contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be
included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or
in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or
binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user.

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font
Name(s), in part or in whole, unless explicit written permission is
granted by the Copyright Holder. This restriction applies to all
references stored in the Font Software, such as the font menu name and
other font description fields, which are used to differentiate the
font from others.

4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder or the Author(s) of the Font
Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any
Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the
Copyright Holder and the Author(s) or with their explicit written
permission.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole,
must be distributed using this license, and may not be distributed
under any other license.

--markc