Re: [9fans] docfonts problem

[Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com>]

>> do you have the fonts?
>> they do not come with plan9port, because the
>> postscript fonts cannot be redistributed except
>> with plan 9 itself.
>
> turns out no.  Here is a sticky question (one I will likely have to write
> Bigelow & Holmes for final clarification), but if I write a script (portage
> ebuild) which downloads and extracts the fonts into plan9port so all this
> works.  Is this a violation of their license?  I would not be
> redistributing it, but would this be considered a derivative work?

where would the script download them from?
whoever makes them available for download
separate from plan 9 is violating that license.
further, this kind of dancing on the edge of a knife
approach to software licensing is not typically
looked kindly upon by the distributions.  i bet
gentoo would object if they found out.

honestly, i wouldn't play these games.

bigelow & holmes granted plan9port a license to
distribute plan 9's lucida bitmap fonts as long as
they were named something other than lucida
(that's why the directories are named luc instead
of lucida), and that same license explicitly excluded
plan 9's lucida sans postscript fonts.  they were very
gracious about licensing even the bitmap fonts when
there was little benefit to them other than good will.
instead of violating the spirit and possibly the letter
of both licenses, i would suggest that you use the
postscript fonts that i substituted in their place, namely
luxi sans, also by bigelow & holmes.  the ms macros
that ship with plan9port use them if you start your
document with

    .FP luxisans

they have equally good unicode coverage and a
similar look to lucida sans.

if you do write such a script to pull the lucida fonts
out automatically and drop them in, please don't use
the name plan9port to describe the resulting software.
i don't want any part of it.

thanks.
russ