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Commons:An essay on the copyright status of IPAMonaPGothic, and its suitability for use in open source projects and on Wikimedia Commons

(Redirected from User:Psiĥedelisto/On IPAMonaPGothic)
 This page is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Commons contributors.
It is not a Commons policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.

This essay is written something like a mathematical proof for simplicity.

Background

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  • 2channel is a Japanese-language textboard which launched in May 1999.
    • After a domain seizure in 2014, two sites claim to be the "real" 2channel: 5ch.net and 2ch.sc.
  • The default font on the textboard and its direct predecessors[note 1] was, and on its successors is, MS PGothic (
    ＭＳ Ｐゴシック
    ).
    • This is because Internet Explorer 4 defaulted to this font for Japanese text.
  • The P stands for proportional.
  • In a traditional CJK[note 2] font, such as the regular MS Gothic (
    ＭＳ ゴシック
    ), a Latin character is equal to one half of a CJK character.[note 3]
  • In MS PGothic, however, the widths of Latin characters are more like a regular Latin font, such as Helvetica.
    • MS UI Gothic is similar, but narrower.
  • A font is metrically-compatible if it can be replaced in a document without changing the sizes of the glyphs, nor their offsets, nor their kerning.[note 4]
  • MS PGothic is a proprietary font.
  • Shift_JIS art is a form of digital art that relies on the metrics of MS PGothic to appear correctly.
  • A font metrically-compatible with MS PGothic can also be used to correctly view Shift_JIS art.

IPA Fonts

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  • The Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) (
    情報処理推進機構
    ) is an agency of the Japanese government.
  • The IPA distributes fonts (IPA Fonts /
    IPAフォント
    ).[primary 1]
  • The IPA Fonts are under the IPA Font License (IPAFL) (
    IPAフォントライセンスv1.0
    ), an OSI[note 6]-approved license.[primary 2]

Law

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  • When licenses conflict, the more strict license prevails, as long as all licenses allow sublicensing, and are compatible.
  • That is to say, a public domain file can become GPL without consent of the original author, but a GPL file cannot become public domain in the same way.
If a license is GPL-compatible, such as the Apache v2.0 license, for example, derivative works of it can be relicensed without knowledge or consent of original authors. [primary 3]
  • The IPAFL is a "viral" license like the GNU GPLv2,[primary 2] but is not itself GPL-compatible according to the FSF.[primary 3]

The Recipient may create, use, reproduce and/or Redistribute a Derived Program under the terms stated above for the Licensed Program.

Predecessors of IPAMonaPGothic

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  • Mona (10 February 2001)[primary 4][primary 5] is an X11 (BDF) font metrically-compatible with MS PGothic.
    • License: Public domain. (Per README.ascii)
  • mona-outline (5 August 2003)[primary 6] is a TTF font metrically-compatible with MS PGothic.
    • License: Public domain. (Per README.ascii)
  • Sazanami (2004)[primary 7] is a pixel and outline font © 1990–2003 by Wada Laboratory, the University of Tokyo and © 2003–2004 Electronic Font Open Laboratory.
    • License: 3-clause BSD license. (Per README of sazanami-20040629)[note 7]

IPAMonaPGothic

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  • Jun Kobayashi modified the IPA Fonts, creating the IPA Mona Fonts
    IPAモナーフォント
    .[primary 8]
    • He also, according to him, used parts of Sazanami fonts,[primary 7] and Mona.
  • Licenses conflict: 3-clause BSD, public domain, and IPAFL.
  • The 3-clause BSD license is IPAFL-compatible; it contains no provision that's impossible to meet under the IPAFL.
  • The IPAFL, therefore, prevails.
  • As a viral license, IPAMonaPGothic is also under the terms of the IPAFL.
  • IPAMonaPGothic is open source and suitable for use on Commons. QED

Notes

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  1. ↑ Ayashii World and Amezou
  2. ↑ Chinese–Japanese–Korean
  3. ↑ For example, Q is equal to one half the width of 丸; so the width of QQ is equal to the width of 丸.
  4. ↑ An example of three fonts that are metrically-compatible Helvetica, Arial and Arimo.
  5. ↑ Due to the larger character set of Shift_JIS, by definition, more can be expressed in it than can be in ASCII.
  6. ↑ en:Open Source Initiative
  7. ↑ Must open in EUC-JP encoding, e.g. with vim, :e ++enc=ujis. License is in English and matches exactly if you do that.

Primary sources

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  1. ↑
    IPAフォント(ver.003)
    : [1]
  2. ↑ a b IPA Font License (IPAFL): [2]
  3. ↑ a b Information about license compatibility is provided by the Free Software Foundation (FSF): [3]
  4. ↑ Official website in October 2001: [4]
  5. ↑ 2channel thread announcing v1: [5]
  6. ↑ monafont-ttf-2.30pre: [6]
  7. ↑ a b Sazanami fonts (29 June 2004): [7]
  8. ↑ IPA Mona Fonts: [8]
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