Redistribution of modified fonts, originally licensed under Apache 2.0

Question

I would like to use a font licensed under Apache License 2.0 (without a NOTICE file and without additional provisions) in my web project. For this end, I made a package of webfonts based on a subset of the font in question (I use an online tool to generate .woff and .eot versions of the font selecting only some Unicode blocks to make the files lighter).

Then I want to distribute the source files of my project (so basically my PHP scripts, CSS stylesheets, and MySQL database, but I also need to include the fonts so that everything works fine, because I work with data in that is not displayed correctly in standard system fonts) under a free license. I am currently considering the MIT License and the copyleft European Union Public Licence 1.2, which is explicitly upstream compatible with Apache 2.0. I will include a file describing the changes I made to the fonts as required by the Apache license. And I will retain the text of the license.

Is it OK if I retain the original name of the font?

The Apache license states that "This License does not grant permission to use the […] product names of the Licensor". Does this mean that I have to rename the modified font contained in my project (just like one has to rename the fonts licensed under the SIL license when subsetting them for web distribution)? Or am I fine with the original name, because it is only a component used in my project, and my project itself has a totally different name?

Two further concerns are: Is it fine that I do not include the source codes of the fonts (because I technically do not work with source codes when I subset fonts using a webfont generator, and I cannot myself edit the source files accordingly) within a project to be distributed under a copyleft license? And is it fine to include Apache licensed fonts in a MIT-licensed project?

Answer 1

Is it OK if I retain the original name of the font?

The conditions in Section 6 of the Apache 2.0 license is specifically about trademarks:

6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.

As such there is nothing in the license that would mandate you to rename things such as files, functions or for that matter font names. So as long as you do not promote this font ass your product using the original font name, you are not IMHO making use of any trademarks or service marks. So renaming is not required and you can retain the original name of the font. If this is meant to be further integrated by your users with other fonts (and possibly the original unmodified fonts) it could be nice to rename it to avoid confusion. But only nice.

Is it fine that I do not include the source codes of the fonts (because I technically do not work with source codes when I subset fonts using a webfont generator, and I cannot myself edit the source files accordingly) within a project to be distributed under a copyleft license?

I would not consider the .woff and eot formats that you redistribute as the "Source form" of the fonts and therefore if I read the EUPL (which is not a very common license) I guess you would likely still need to get the source code somehow to meet the EUPL copyleft condistions.

And is it fine to include Apache licensed fonts in a MIT-licensed project?

There is no issue I can think of there, both are permissive licenses.

And additionally:

So am I right if I would for instance use GPL3 instead of EUPL (which claims to be GPL3-compatible), I would surely be obliged to provide font source files?

Yes, this is a good analogy to understand the effects of the copyleft here.

Then I'd rather only use the MIT license to avoid the trouble. (My only reason to use EUPL was that it is adapted to European law).

The EUPL is a rare but comprehensive license that has been created specifically for this purpose. I personally thinks it may make sense for the EU public sector. It may be less useful, less relevant and a tad too arcane otherwise.