Re: Quran font issue

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya <meor dot ridzuan at gmail dot com> wrote:
> Nadim,
> 
> One thing that I really want to resolve is the font licensing issues.
> You insist on GPL, and I posted my view on this (my worries etc), but
> you have not really give any view on this. Maybe you can say something
> on this (please refer to my previous post). The thing is I really want
> to upload my font for testing purposes but I need a good license
> before doing that.

Meor, I understand your views but as far as I know at this point there
isn't a license to do what you'd like it to do and protectionism via
with-holding doesn't seem like the proper answer to me.  First off I
don't think we'll be able to completely resolve this issue here as I
think various lawyers and/or open source aficionados will need to get
involved, but let's agree on a few principles and work from there.

We'd like to see this font available for those that need it for a
number of reasons,

 a. So they can view Quranic text - the text will come from a
    source that will have to again somehow guarantee authenticity
    and correctness.

 b. We'd like this font to showcase the limitations of what is currently
    in unicode -- in other words, we'd like to point to them what is
    lacking in the current codepoints, etc so that various missing
    characters/glyphs can be added/modified.

 c. We'd like to have this font be a template for others looking to
    develop other fonts to serve the same outlined purpose.

Having the license be under a closed license of sorts won't help us
deter those looking to modify it and ship it off as something wrong.
What we really need is a checking mechanism in which validity or
information about the tools and texts is noted.  For instance, one
potential simple method would be to note the md5sum of both the font
and the Quran text and either show it to the user for him/her to
verify and/or get online and check with a trusted website or similar.
The md5sum would be computed each time the application is run and
the user would have to OK/verify upon use.

Again, I do see the dilemma, but I think we can work around it with
some smarts instead of being protectionists.  Those that are looking
to break the system and inject errors or ta7ref will not be deterred
by a closed-sourced license - so we'll need to be smarter in our
verification methodology to double/triple check the fonts (and text)
at hand.

Hope that makes sense.

Salam.

 - Nadim



		
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