Related: the US government has its own font. The page mentions it further down.
https://public-sans.digital.gov/
Discussion of the font on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19607371
https://public-sans.digital.gov/
Discussion of the font on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19607371
“Open-source licenses, like all software licenses, are only possible through assertion of copyright. Certain free-software advocates prefer to sidestep this inconvenient fact (akin to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare’). For individual software authors, this usually poses no problem, because their copyright arises at the moment the work is created. Thus, they’re free to put their work under any license, including an open-source license.
“But US government employees are a special case. As a matter of federal law (17 USC § 105), they can’t assert copyright in their work. Public Sans is an inseparable mixture of copyrighted work (= the underlying Libre Franklin font) and uncopyrightable work (= the alterations made by the GSA). The GSA currently claims that Public Sans has been released under the OFL. But that’s impossible. To use this license, they’d first need to have a copyright in their contributions. But they don’t.”
— Matthew Butterick (type designer + lawyer) https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/the-curious-case-o...
Here's the upstream issue:
https://github.com/uswds/public-sans/issues/30
He also opened a separate issue claiming an Establishment clause violation because the OFL was created by https://www.sil.org/about:
Not sure how he is supposed to have addressed the "lotsa government lawyers think different" argument when no one in that thread has raised it, let alone provided any evidence of it. And again, for it to be relevant, these government lawyer opinions would need to be talking about the OFL specifically.
His claim comes down to the U.S. government not being able to use any license which relies on copyright claims, which is not unique to OFL. This is why the government lawyers question is relevant: if he's right, that means that a bunch of other contributions shouldn't have been allowed unless the projects are public domain or dual-licensed.
You haven't read his claim then, he explicitly isn't saying that. He claims only that the government can't use the OFL because of the specific demands made by the OFL which the government can't satisfy. FSF licenses don't mind public domain contributions, the same is not true of the OFL.
>Can the US Government release a program under the GNU GPL? (#GPLUSGov) If the program is written by US federal government employees in the course of their employment, it is in the public domain, which means it is not copyrighted. Since the GNU GPL is based on copyright, such a program cannot be released under the GNU GPL. (It can still be free software, however; a public domain program is free.)
However, when a US federal government agency uses contractors to develop software, that is a different situation. The contract can require the contractor to release it under the GNU GPL. (GNU Ada was developed in this way.) Or the contract can assign the copyright to the government agency, which can then release the software under the GNU GPL.
Can the US Government release improvements to a GPL-covered program? (#GPLUSGovAdd) Yes. If the improvements are written by US government employees in the course of their employment, then the improvements are in the public domain. However, the improved version, as a whole, is still covered by the GNU GPL. There is no problem in this situation.
If the US government uses contractors to do the job, then the improvements themselves can be GPL-covered.
The user space libselinux developed by the NSA is in the public domain. Which is consistent with the above. Are you sure that SELinux contribution was not released as public domain and then incorporated into the linux kernel? Something the GPL allows which the OFL license in question here does not.
If true, the practical implication is that A) Public Sans is in the public domain within the USA, which means people there have freedoms in using it that they wouldn't otherwise have; and B) their current license is incoherently obscuring these freedoms.
The GSA can't license something that is in the public domain. Should they recognize this fact, it will make clear what people can and can't do with the font.