[OS X TeX] Current "best practice" for Lucida under TeXShop [OT]

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Tue Jan 25 06:05:54 EST 2005


On 25 Jan 2005, at 10:33 am, Ralph Martin wrote:

>
> On 25 Jan 2005, at 10:21 am, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>> Of course it's a matter of interpretation. Consider Apple's Software 
>> License Agreement 
>> <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=26275>. Playing 
>> devil's advocate, you have Article 1 which defines "software" as 
>> including accompanying fonts:
>>
>> "The software, documentation and any fonts accompanying this License 
>> whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any 
>> other form (collectively the "Apple Software") [...]"
>>
>> and then Article 2 which only allows one copy of the software on a 
>> single computer:
>>
>> "This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple 
>> Software on a single computer at a time"
>
> Aha. So when they are loaded into RAM, the OS must delete them from my 
> hard disk, I suppose :-)
> And write them back out when they are no longer needed in RAM. :-)
> And I had better not have any crashes.... :-) :-)
>
> Someone should tell Apple's lawyers to get better advice on how to 
> word their licences.
>

It does get a bit silly, doesn't it. But arguably, "use one copy" would 
include loading it into RAM from the hard disk (yes, I know you could 
call that "making a second copy" on the computer, but I think the 
intent is reasonably clear). "Using" any piece of software normally 
involves such transient "copying" into memory--multiple times, what 
with the cache on the hard drive, the CPU caches, etc.

OTOH, making a persistent copy or derivative on your hard drive, such 
as by using FontForge to convert to Type 1, re-encode the font, etc., 
would pretty clearly be contrary to these license terms.

Personally, I sympathize with Bruno's view that this is unreasonably 
(and unnecessarily) restrictive, but it's a pretty widespread form of 
licensing (for fonts, not just for other software). I think the same 
would be true for the fonts that ship with Windows, for example, and 
for fonts licensed from many of the major vendors.

JK

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