[texhax] stix fonts license and TeX

[Karl Berry]

Hi Michael,

    It seems that the license disallows modification of the fonts themselves 

Right, and the freedom to make modifications is a fundamental part of
all commonly accepted free software definitions (FSF, Debian, OSI, ...).

    (I recall that a few years ago Don Knuth got mad an installation
    that "improved" his fonts

Because they were distributed under the same name, AFAIK.  The base CM
fonts have been modified and redistributed countless times (they form
the base of cm-super, cm-lgc, aer, lm, ...), and DEK has said on many
occasions that that is perfectly ok with him -- just choose different
names.

    It seems that the fonts themselves may not be sold unless they are
    part of a larger package. 

Also the augmented/translated fonts could not be sold.  Such
restrictions on sale also fails all the accepted free software
definitions.  (TL, for example, has been sold in bookstores, through
user groups, with books, etc.)

    Is this a problem for free (as in beer) TeX distributions?

I'm not talking about free as in beer (gratis).  I'm talking about free
as in freedom (libre).

MiKTeX, teTeX, TeX Live, and others are all libre distributions.  They
could not include the stix fonts under the present license.

Best,
karl