License of luzsans-ttf fonts?

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i'm curious too about it.

I've posted to the ubuntu-devel list, but with no success yet. Who could know this?

Good question, I got no clue, but thanks for your posting, that helped me to find this Futura clone. It's missing the condensed variations though, however that's not too bad. I am planning to use http://bitbucket.org/philip/font-optimizer/src/ on it and ttf2eot or mkeot (from eot-utils) to create small files for webfont usage of these...

Their quality really isn't too bad, it's HF&J after all. And neither them nor HP seem to be sending takedown/C&D notices to free font hosters, so I assume the use is condoned if not promoted. Still wonder about the license though.

i can halven the fontsize by subsetting the font, however it's still double the size of the Futura fonts... that's bad for web things... yeah the font is really nice! aren't there condensed versions of the fonts?

I suppose it is ... nope, no condensed versions. HP doesn't use them, so they weren't commissioned I'm pretty sure. What character set are you going for, and what size (30K? 50K?)

i'm telling the subsetter to get me thse:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789
,.;:<>?![]{}~-_=@#$%^&*()+`'"/\|°
öäü ÖÄÜ éàè ÉÀÈ

from the luzhpbit.ttf 76kb i get
the 30kb luzhpbit.ttf (subset font) the eot is also about 30kb

with Futura I was able to get:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38308 Nov 30 1998 FUTURAB.TTF
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18612 Aug 17 10:18 FUTURAB-web.TTF

The condensed versions are nice! I wonder if I can tweak the HP font with fontforge to get it
smaller...

That's an odd glyph set. It neither supports German nor French (or Italian/Spanish/etc. for that matter), so if you're going for English only, you might as well leave the umlauts and accents out. Or provide language-specific files. But I personally would expect at least Latin-1 from a decent webfont.

If you want to try tweaking them in FontForge, good luck :) Having a condensed (not just squeezed!) version would indeed be nice. Doing the thin and bold and interpolating the rest would be the way to go.

As for making it a webfont, two thoughts:
1) I haven't looked myself yet, but does LuzSans contain TT hints that the Linotype version doesn't? In that case, the larger size would be justified. I think 40-50kb aren't much of a problem nowadays.
2) We could possibly contact Google. They are pretty good at handling that stuff, and may be interested in offering Luz Sans as a webfont themselves, if the font is indeed GPL'ed. Thoughts on that?

The glyph set can be made yourself by an UTF-8 file with all the characters needed inside, so tell me which are missing, or even better, where would i get such files for german/english/french?

Yep, i'm not going to make a condensed font of this, unless the license is cleared up...

Let's contact google, i've tried on the forms/comment fiels of google webfonts (for the ttf-mplus fonts), however i got no replies about that, do you have a contact responsible for google webfonts? their listed
webfonts didn't change since at least 3 months...

German needs the ß -- I forget it got out of fashion in CH :)
French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography#Diacritics
Italian, Spanish and most others should be fine with those as well.

As for a Google contact, I've sent you an email.

What do the Ubuntu people say about the font and its licensing? Maybe since the font was made for HP, someone there would know the details, and we should contact HP about the HP New Futura?

Thanks Gürkan!

ubuntu-devel never got back to me (in fact, I doubt my message was ever approved for the list; I'm not a registered developer ...)

I just sent the question to HP (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/hpads/contactus.html), and I'll post their answer here.

What other ubuntu lists could I check? I feel like it's in HF&J/HP's best interest just not to answer the question, esp. if the font is really free.

Two more things:

Dell lists LuzSans as GPL as well:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/LatONFla/sp/ug/offer-17.htm

I've found another version of the package here:
http://hpmini.archive.canonical.com/dists/hardy-hpmini/universe/source/

The description file lists "Ubuntu Solutions Group" as the maintainer. I've emailed them as well.

Well if they list it there, the case is clear, especially if we had a download link for the font from dell.com (or HP)... Let's see if any of them answers...

i'm using medium and bold on http://livecd.gnustep.org/

ok i found these more links:
http://hp2133linux.blogspot.com/2009/02/installing-hp-linux-mie-theme.html
(the font is visible top right in the black pictures)

pointing me to the software download of a restore tool for hp mie linux:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-68020-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&os=2020&product=3860346

maybe i'll have to try that tool to see what it does... (and where it gets the stuff from,
and if there's more info on the license for the font)

i've also contacted people i had in contacts @canonical.com about this...

that tool points to ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software10/COL25940/dennis-stable-install-usb-gm-1.img (which is about 1.1 GB)...

Interesting ... unfortunately I didn't get replies to any of the emails I sent out. Let me know if you find anything!

the image download just finished, i was able to loopback mount it and copy away the rootfs.img, let's see what i get when i loopback mount that and look around...

it's a squashfs filessytem, that i was able to mount, and that font is installed in there as well... no more details about copyright than the link on the top...

debian/changelog states that the package is GPL. It is a "native" package, meaning that no separate upstream tarball is available; so the tar.gz in:

  http://netbook-remix.archive.canonical.com/updates/pool/public/l/luzsans-ttf/

should be used for re-building.

Being GPL (rather than GPL with Font Exception) unfortunately means that the font isn't going to be particularly useful. Dave Crossland and Nicholas Spalinger who may be better placed to give advice on the limitations you are likely to encounter with a plain GPL font, seemingly without source code, but as this is posted as a question, rather than a bug it's not possible for me to subscribe them directly.

I have personally not heard of this font before and I seriously doubt
that a H&FJ design / HP corporate font got released under a
appropriate font-specific libre license. That would be quite surprising!

AFAICT the metadata of the font currently has:
"08/03 Luz, HP New Futura The Hoefler Type Foundry, 1998-2003." and no
other indication about licensing.

If anyone has it directly from the foundry authors or commissioned
company (partners or whatever) that the font is actually released openly
then they need to say that clearly and prove it with the appropriate
documentation and metadata in the source tree: the ttf name table
filled-in with the current information, a detached licensing file and a
FONTLOG are the best way to do that.

The changelog simply states:

  "Ubuntu Solutions Group <email address hidden> Tue, 08 Jul 2008"

which makes it hard to know "whodunnit" (note that this is _not_ the main Ubuntu archives); I've started trying to track somebody down. Generally the ultimatum is that everything shipped on the CD must be libre software (*limited exception for kernel-related loadable firmware, and a couple of certain binary graphics card drivers where the open equivalents can't yet bring up the hardware).

Indeed, especially since that e-mail address doesn't work...

Thanks for taking this up guys!

Obviously GPL is a poor choice for a font file -- what's more, doesn't the GPL *require* the source code to be published along with the "binaries"? I'm afraid all this points to ignorance and sloppiness on the part of the "Solutions Group."

If you can't track anyone down I can always try to contact HP and HF&J again.

You can always open the fonts in fontforge (even if it's ttf or otf, and then edit it), however my plan is not that. I like the font like it is, and just want to use it without license fees. I just sent a mail to HF&J today. So it's just about a home about the font, and what license they really are. Maybe a statement from HF&J or HP or Canonical would help...

From Caitlin Ege <<email address hidden>)

Dear Gurkan,
Thank you for your interest in Luz Sans. This typeface is not available for licensing at this time, but if you provide us with your contact information, we would be happy to include you on our product release email when the time comes.

Please note that this is not a free font as well.

In the meantime, please feel free to browse through our existing typefaces available for licensing at www.typography.com. Should you see something of interest, please do not hesitate to contact me for assistance.

Kindest regards,
Caitlin

Bummer. At least that settles the question. Thanks Gürkan!

Now it'd probably be helpful if someone could fix the license information in that package. It's popped up on at least one "free font" site:

http://www.freepx.net/tag/luz-sans-for-free/

... unless, of course, HP decides to publish a OFL version, which would be just as awesome as it is unlikely ...

Absolutely sad, indeed. Welcome. I've seen it at some other places too. If HP has those rights... I wonder who at HP can decide/do something about this... Should I contact Misses Caitlin again, and ask her out?

... hahaha, can't wait to read her reply here :D

Judging by the email though I wouldn't be surprised if H&FJ have reserved the right to sell the font themselves at some point, to make some extra cash. Archer, for example, was released that way after Martha Stewart Living had held exclusive rights for some time.

No more replies...

Gürkan: on the contrary, I spoke to Bdale at HP today and he confirmed that he's been researching it and poking people by email from the HP end of things.

Paul: Thanks that you spoke to Bdale about this, and I'm glad he's researching it... I'm curious what the answer will be.

A further snippet of follow-up information via Bdale, who has now tracked down the people on the HP side who remember the episode on their side! No information just yet, but to let people know in the mean time.

Great, thanks Paul! I'm really glad he's taking this up. Keep us posted!

... any news?

Sebastian: have you read http://www.amazon.de/Die-Kunst-Typographie-Paul-Renner/dp/3875124146 it's so wonderful.

merry christmas and a happy new year

Ha! A Renner book would be right on topic. I haven't, but I'll definitely go to our library to check it out :)

I'm still hoping for an answer from Paul/Bdale ...

A happy new year to all of you as well!

Sebastian: I haven't got any updates. Any updates at this time are year are likely to have high latency.

Are there any news on this?

Gürkan: No news, I have sent a request for an update from Bdale.

Paul: Thanks for helping...

I wish it was free, this would be so good for all Linux distros, everyong doing texts (or photos with texts) and letters and even for Windows an Mac OS X users. Guess there's still no news on it...

ping, still no news at all?

Alternatively you can use
https://github.com/sursly/league-spartan

Not yet officially packaged, because building from source needs software that is not yet packaged in debian:
http://sid.ethz.ch/debian/fonts-leaguespartan/