OFL-1.1 is listed as permissive, but has some copyleft clause

[maxhbr]

The OFL-1.1 contains

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole,
 must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be
 distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to
 remain under this license does not apply to any document created
 using the Font Software.

and therefore is not permissive.

The DB currently shows it as permissive: https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/ofl-1.1.html

[pombredanne]

Thanks... there seems to have been a few weird stuff I pushed in this commit 17ecf0f#diff-816c623418cd4c2179147c157271f85108af85f19360ce0cd963220f697659c0

@DennisClark can you chime in on the OFL and the changes in the commit above?

[DennisClark]

The no-license-change restriction in the ofl-1.1 is a restriction, but definitely not a copyleft obligation, since there is no source redistribution required and the license text makes it clear that it only applies to the font itself, not any code that uses that font. Because of the no-license-change restriction, it would be better to categorize ofl-1.1 as "Free Restricted" rather than "Permissive".

[maxhbr]

It is listed as copyleft on

• https://www.osadl.org/fileadmin/checklists/unreflicenses/OFL-1.1.txt
• https://ifross.github.io/ifrOSS/Lizenzcenter (Sorry, German page, did not find the translated page)

The statement "if you modify, you must distribute the modified version under the same licensing terms." is a copyleft clause in my understanding. I wouldn't say that source code offer is a requirement for copyleft, instead I think it describes the requirement to license my modification under a specific license (which might or might not have the source code offer).

[DennisClark]

I do not interpret the no-license-change statement as copyleft; it is very common with font licenses in general. To me copyleft means that the other code used along with the licensed code must get the same license, and that is not the case here.

[DennisClark]

For reference:
https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/help.html#license-categories

[maxhbr]

but https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/cc-by-sa-4.0.html is marked as (limited) copyleft? Isn't that basically the same construct and does not require source distribution. Especially in the case that it would be applied to a font.

And if one creates a derived font, based on the one under OFL-1.1, the new one also needs to be licensed under it OFL-1.1. Which for me counts as "the changes made need to be licensed under the same license".

[silverhook]

I can’t see how this (emphasis mine) could be read otherwise than copyleft:

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

To quote the Wikipedia article:

Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works.

That is how I understand it and how most other FOSS lawyers I know understand it. The source code availability is just a technical means (and in some computer languages requirement) to enable those rights/freedoms.

The following sentence makes it limited to just the font:

The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the Font Software.

As such, it’s probably best to treat it as Copyleft Limited as it applies only to the font.

On that note, Ubuntu Font License 1.0, is a (huge) modification of the OFL, falls under the same category (i.e. should be Copyleft Limited).

In that sense it’s similar to MPL-2.0, which very much is a copyleft license, but limited only to the files that the license is mentioned in.