Add ProFontX

[jimbojsb]

No description provided.

[vitorgalvao]

Seeing as url doesn’t seem to point to a specific version, this cask should use version 'latest' and no_checksum. See an example.

[fanquake]

@jimbojsb Can you squash your commits

[jimbojsb]

done

[vitorgalvao]

Something I forgot before — this doesn’t seem to have a license. Have you contacted the author to make sure it’s alright to distribute the font in this way?

Also, that url seems to have just an empty file in it, and not a font file.

[jimbojsb]

Hmm. In a bash prompt, I agree, it seems to be 0 bytes. However, if you look in Finder, it is 55k. Not sure what to make of that except for that it definitely works and opens in FontBook. I have emailed the author to check on the license, but there's not one mentioned on his site, or on the original font's site (ProFont, non-osx version). As far as I can tell, it's free as in beer.

[vitorgalvao]

As far as I can tell, it's free as in beer.

Problem being that if the license is not specified, it automatically defaults to not being free at all. The authors may also want it to be free to use but not free to redistribute (i.e., only allowing users to download it by directly visiting the website). It’s very unlikely that we would have legal problems due to that, but it’s not unheard of.

On another note, I still see it as being empty. It also does not have an extension, are you sure it works as intended?

[rolandwalker]

There's nothing wrong with the file; the font data is in the resource fork. It appears to be 0 to ls, but you can do xattr -l ProFontX to see that the data is there. Finder is also reporting correctly.

@jimbojsb thank you for emailing the author, and please keep us posted. I will poke around and look for license info as well.

[rolandwalker]

I actually already have a branch which includes the font from the parent project ProFont. (It is waiting on Homebrew/homebrew-cask#2305 to be able to unpack the Stuffit archive.) So I have previously audited the license of the parent project.

From the parent ProFont license (below) the parent font is freely distributable. ProFontX (the current PR) is a derived work, but parent ProFont license gives no specific permissions regarding a derived works. It is possible that ProFontX has separately obtained an appropriate license from parent ProFont. However, he has deleted the license from his distribution, so it already looks questionable.

The ProFontX author is welcome to clear up the issue.

Can I redistribute ProFont Distribution?

“ProFont Distribution” is Copyright © 1997, SQ Software.  The ProFont fonts are Copyright
© 1997, Carl R. Osterwald.  It is our intention that “ProFont Distribution” get the widest
possible distribution.  You may redistribute unmodified copies of “ProFont Distriubtion” as
long as it is accompanied by an unmodified copy of “About ProFont Distribution 2.2”

[jimbojsb]

I have talked via email with the authors of this font. They are in agreement that it should be released under an open source license (MIT) and are planning to do so. Apparently that was the plan years ago it just never materialized (profont is ancient). I think we are good to include this as well as @rolandwalker's branch for original profont (pending stuffit enhancements)

[rolandwalker]

@jimbojsb , it's extremely cool of you to take the time to work with the author! Keep in mind that in our view, the copyright holder is the parent project ProFont.

The new author has made some quite helpful changes to ProFont, but their license to him didn't include making changes (see above: "you may redistribute unmodified copies"). Nor is he given the right to change the license to MIT from the custom ProFont license.

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket. We'd love to include it if the license can be straightened out. Luckily, the author can do that if he contacts ProFont and gets their permission. As the copyright holder, they have complete power to to amend the license, give a special one-time license to a certain individual, transfer the license, etc etc etc.

The SIL OFL didn't exist when they created ProFont. They sound like nice people. Maybe they could be convinced to switch : http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL .

[jimbojsb]

Understood. My correspondence has been with Carl Osterwald, Stephen Gilardi, and Tobias Jung. I fully understand that ProFontX is a derivative work. Per my latest conversations, Tobias has agreed to update his distributions with a clear license file in the next few days.

[jimbojsb]

http://tobiasjung.name/profont/ Profont has officially been released under an MIT license.

[jimbojsb]

@rolandwalker also looks like Tobias has updated the Mac downloads to include alternatives to a Stuffit archive so you could just use DMG for your branch rather than the depends_on feature

[rolandwalker]

Wow, @jimbojsb, you get results!

[jimbojsb]

So. Can we merge this now? And if not, lets close it.

[rolandwalker]

I thought we were just waiting for ProFontX to include license in his distro per requirements of MIT license of parent project. Why close? Seems so near to resolution.

[jimbojsb]

This is good to go, ProFontX now includes an MIT license in the distribution. I've updated the commit as the font is now in a sub-folder.

[rolandwalker]

brilliant!