Font legalities
#1
Can anyone out there advise me as to what the legal deal is with using fonts in our skins?

For example, the font Confluence uses is DejaVu, an open source font so no trouble there, but what if I wanted to use Arial or Times New Roman? Would that cause a problem?

I've searched the forums and didn't really find a definitive answer, open source fonts are pretty thin on the ground (although theres some very good ones) but is simply downloading random fonts from DaFont.com a viable option?

Cheers

PS. As a sidenote, I've only tried this on windows at the moment but renaming a .OTF font to .TTF works but a .OTF in fonts.xml does not.
Reply
#2
When it comes to including skins that use non-open source fonts in the official xbmc-repo it's pretty simple, you can't.

Aside from that, there's no general rule of thumb when it comes to this. Different fonts use different licensing terms, best advice would be to contact the author or lookup the terms on their site.

Arial or Times probably are free for personal use but you can't redistribute them. As is the case with a lot of fonts.
DaFont.com provides licensing information about individual fonts, so check those.

.otf fonts are not supported in xbmc.
Reply
#3
Jeroen Wrote:When it comes to including skins that use non-open source fonts in the official xbmc-repo it's pretty simple, you can't.

Aside from that, there's no general rule of thumb when it comes to this. Different fonts use different licensing terms, best advice would be to contact the author or lookup the terms on their site.

Arial or Times probably are free for personal use but you can't redistribute them. As is the case with a lot of fonts.

.otf fonts are not supported in xbmc.

Thanks Jeroen, pretty much what I expected. I saw your name pop up in the forums I searched for an answer - you've obviously travelled this road before.

Interesting that changing the file extension on OTFs to TTF still works...
Reply
#4
It's a frustrating issue. Because there's actually quite a lot of fonts that you are allowed to redistribute as long as they are embedded into the software (so that would include skins). In other words the user shouldn't be able to download the font files themselves individually.

So if xbmc would allow the skinner to pack the fonts into an .xbt/.xpr like package, seems to me there would not be a problem. It has been brought up before, but there's no interest in doing this. The motivation is that if someone wanted to, they could probably be extracted anyway when you hack into them. Seems to me, in that case it becomes the responsibility of the user, not the software publisher. And this can probably be said about a lot of applications.

But hey, I'm no lawyer so I can't speak for anyone but myself.
Reply
#5
Do you have an example of a font license where you're allowed to distribute the font with (essentially closed-source) software but aren't allowed to distribute the font file itself? This seems a strange requirement.

I'm happy to refer this to the good folks at the software freedom law center for them to review whether this will apply to XBMC skins or not.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


Image
Reply
#6
I bet this basically has to do with not allowing people to get a copy and reuse it again (avoiding the purchase fee). Thus why you can distribute it in a way other people can't re-distribute
Reply
#7
Jezz_X Wrote:I bet this basically has to do with not allowing people to get a copy and reuse it again (avoiding the purchase fee). Thus why you can distribute it in a way other people can't re-distribute

An example would be PDFs. I don't have a commercial font license in front of me, but I would expect that the license would cover using the font in electronic publications such as a PDF. But since PDF embeds the font within the document, it is possible to use open source software such as fontforge to extract fonts from a PDF (to the extent characters are used in the document). Including the font info in a texture file rather than packaging the "unprotected" .ttf in the skin tree would probably be analogous to distributing a PDF rather than a .doc and .ttf in a zip file.
Reply
#8
jmarshall Wrote:Do you have an example of a font license where you're allowed to distribute the font with (essentially closed-source) software but aren't allowed to distribute the font file itself? This seems a strange requirement.

I'm happy to refer this to the good folks at the software freedom law center for them to review whether this will apply to XBMC skins or not.

Cheers,
Jonathan

theophile Wrote:An example would be PDFs. I don't have a commercial font license in front of me, but I would expect that the license would cover using the font in electronic publications such as a PDF. But since PDF embeds the font within the document, it is possible to use open source software such as fontforge to extract fonts from a PDF (to the extent characters are used in the document). Including the font info in a texture file rather than packaging the "unprotected" .ttf in the skin tree would probably be analogous to distributing a PDF rather than a .doc and .ttf in a zip file.

Yes, you see that a lot. But I also came across a couple that specifically mentioned embedded use in software products. Of course, now that I am looking for them I can't seem to find them (I've checked _a lot_ of font sites before). But I'll look for them some more later.
Reply
#9
found some neat open source font collections:
http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
http://openfontlibrary.org/

I'm not too familiar with the OFL, and too lazy to read it. But I'm pretty sure you can redistribute these fonts with your open source skin as long as you leave the Copyright in tact!
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
Font legalities0