Hi, I sent this announce to debian-devel yesterday, but send again for discussing this issue (thanks your advice, Branden).
I've already sent BTS to each package maintainers. Thanks, -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dear, Debian JP Project reports to Debian Project about Japanese fonts included in Debian archive and which has a serious license violation. Debian Project should case for this problem immediately. * Debian packages which receive influence o ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho o ttf-xwatanabe-mincho o watanabe-vfont o ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic o xfonts-intl-japanese-big o ttf-kochi-mincho / ttf-kochi-mincho-naga10 o hbf-kanji48 * background In June 2003, KANOU Hiroki who is one of the developer of Kochi font, FREE Japanese font, noticed that a part of characters in the Kochi font are closely similar to a font that is provided by the font vendor, TYPEBANK Co., Ltd. Kochi font is based on so-called "Watanabe font" and is diverting the part of the font. The same-looked fonts that is found in this time matches this Watanabe font. Watanabe font was certainly converted from LABO123 32-dot font which was distributed as Public Domain Software. As a result of KANOU's investigation, LABO123 32-dot font is same as the bitmap font (TYPEBANK Mincho M) that was developed by TYPEBANK Co., Ltd. and HITACHI Ltd. collectively, and copied without any authorization. Therefore, LABO123 32-dot font, Watanabe font and any other derivative fonts violate the license of TYPEBANK and HITACHI. In 29th September 2003, HITACHI announced as following: http://www.hitachi-printingsolutions.co.jp/topix/release/030929.html (It is not available in English yet.) o This 32-dot font is developed by HITACHI and TYPEBANK collectively, and both company have the copyright. Therefore, this font can not be used, published and distributed without agreement with both company. o In the case of diversion with Linux, that was no agreement. However, considering about the advancement of Linux and collaborating this movement, this font is available in the restricted situation. Those who want to use this font should make an offer to HITACHI PRINTING SOLUTIONS Co., Ltd. In addition, Hitachi, Ltd. replies to a questioner as following: o disable to distribute a AS-IS copied fonts (LABO123 32-dot font, Watanabe font). o restrict Kochi font to be non-profit use only. Conclude a license agreement between a Kochi font producer and HITACHI-TYPEBANK, and indicate the using of the copyright of HITACHI-TYPEBANK in the publish announcements and/or the instructions. Distributors should contact to a Kochi font producer, not HITACHI-TYPEBANK. How does the Kochi font will be distributed is decided with a creator of Kochi font, the target of distribution is not limited to the Linux systems. * response The following list includes the packages which is to be affected and our recommended response. o ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho Watanabe font is required to be removed. stable: remove unstable: remove o ttf-xwatanabe-mincho Watanabe font is required to be removed. stable: remove unstable: remove o watanabe-vfont Watanabe font is required to be removed. stable: remove unstable: remove o ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic It has Watanabe font in a small part of symbol character. stable: replace with fix or remove unstable: replace with fix or remove o xfonts-intl-japanese-big This package includes the problematic 32-dot font. Current stable and unstable include the upstream version 1.2, however version 1.2.1 is replaced with the problem-free font. stable: replace with the GNU intlfonts 1.2.1 or remove unstable: replace with the GNU intlfonts 1.2.1 ASAP o ttf-kochi-mincho / ttf-kochi-mincho-naga10 This package is based on problematic Watanabe font. Revision 1.0.20030809-1 and later are replaced with problem-free font. (In the case of Ghostscript 7, gs will be broken without applying the patch in Bug#205055, though.) stable: replace with 1.0.20030809-1 and later, or remove unstable: no problem o hbf-kanji48 48-dot font in this package is problem-free font. However, the sentence in the Description [and the vector font in the "watanabe-vfont" package.] may cause a misunderstanding. stable: needless to response unstable: fix the Description The distributed package files, media, ISO images are not required to get in back, but the next Debian Woody revision, Sarge and the future release are required to these responses. In addition, we recommend that users and vendors don't redistribute these problematic fonts. We will submit the bug report to the maintainers of each package and ftp maintainers to response this problem as the following this e-mail. (Translated into English by Nobuhiro IMAI and Matanuki. Thank you) Regards, - -- Debian JP Project Leader Kenshi Muto [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iEYEARECAAYFAj+BNooACgkQQKW+7XLQPLHlhgCfdARGJc7Inza3Cth6/DrijKYp tHsAoJDe1wJx3T/Zb4byx5RQdMAYnpL1 =VqCX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
