[XeTeX] Comments on use of font licenses text copy?

[Michiel Kamermans]

<<World is strange, because, not being a lawyer, in many www pages I 
read: "All rights reserved", however, I doubt if all of the visitors are 
supposed to ask first, if they may actually look at the content, which 
they are presented with>>

Viewing content that has been made public does not infringe on any 
rights, be it a car sitting in the carpark or a web page published 
online. However, with an "All rights reserved", the owners are the only 
ones with the right to manipulate and /or duplicate the material. 
Technically, this means that page/data caching is a legal grey area, but 
most people are sensible enough to not consider that an infringement.

As for the fonts:

<< living in this strange world I'm pretty unsure, if I may safely copy 
texts of  the following font licenses as references and examples in my 
own work.>>

If you intend to create a font for commercial purposes, then my only 
advice is to consult with a business lawyer specialised in software - 
you can copy other font's EULA, but they can be tailored specifically to 
the way the font is distributed (NIS, for instance, sells you an 
installer for a font with a registration key, which you then need to 
turn into a license key online during the install process. This is a 
much tighter control over who uses your fonts than a regular EULA).

However, if it's going to be a free font, then a GPL (GNU general public 
license) or CC (creative commons) license text should be quite 
sufficient. The only thing that sets fonts apart from other software is 
that you have to pay a bit more attention to what use-rights you grant 
in terms of embedding, and that's usually indicated as a font property 
(which, if your license prohibits editing of font properties, should be 
sufficient).

- Mike "Pomax" Kamermans
nihongoresources.com