[OS X TeX] Re: Macintouch report on TeX versus Word

[David Watson]

On Jan 24, 2009, at 3:45 PM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
> One thing though: I believe—I have not checked, that using Mac fonts  
> is not acceptable for a GNU free doc license.

A search for "font" at the home of the latest GNU Free Documentation  
License comes up with zero matches, so the problem cannot be with GNU  
FDL.

Having said that, I would suggest that any limits on the usage of a  
particular font would arise from the designer of that particular font.
One way of finding said limitations would be to look in the Font Info  
of Apple's "Font Book" application.

 From what I can tell, there is no "copy protection" or restrictions  
of use on any of the "Apple" trademarked fonts, which is what I  
understand you to mean by "Mac fonts".

Times New Roman, from Monotype, has a License agreement stating that  
their "software" may not be copied or distributed, and they have a  
handy phone number that you may call if you have any questions about  
what the limitations of your usage rights are.
I would suggest that you look for any such Licenses for fonts that you  
wish to use in a document and contact the appropriate representative  
if you are so concerned about this sort of thing.

I would personally assume that "distribution" of the "software" means  
distribution of the font file in a directly usable format, not as an  
embedded representation inside a pdf document.
This seems to be backed up by the online publisher Lulu.com, which I  
would assume should know and be concerned about such things:
     http://www.lulu.com/en/help/book_formatting_faq#font_guidelines