Program Termination and Software Licence Agreement Issues
The project was terminated in August 2002, allegedly due to frequent EULA violations. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that "Microsoft has also found that the downloads were being abused — repackaged, modified and shipped with commercial products in violation of the EULA." "Most users who wanted the fonts have downloaded them already." However, that same EULA allows redistribution if the packages are kept in their original format (.exe or .sit.hqx) and original filenames (e.g. times32.exe) and not used to add value to commercial products. As a result, these packages are still available for download on third-party websites under the terms of the original web fonts end user license agreement.
The EULA referenced below also requires that a copy be applied to transferees. The EULA is therefore directly linked to on, for example, the documentation page for the Sourceforge "corefonts" download package. If a third party offering the fonts for download does not offer a copy of the EULA, the legal status of such a download is questionable. However, a copy of the EULA is obtainable via the FAQ maintained on Microsoft's typography website and from some other third-party websites.
For Windows, the fonts are provided as self-extracting executables (.exe); each includes an embedded cabinet file that contains a font file in TrueType format (.ttf). For the Macintosh, the files are provided as BinHexed Stuff-It archives (.sit.hqx). It is not allowed to rename, edit or create any derivative works from the executables (e.g. arial32.exe) or archives (Arial.sit.hqx), other than subsetting when embedding them in documents. The fonts can be installed and used on non-Windows or non-Macintosh operating systems, so long as they are distributed in original form (original .exe files or .sit.hqx files) and with original name (e.g. arial32.exe). A cabinet file can be extracted in end-user's system with an appropriate software, if such a software is available.
The latest fonts versions that were available from Microsoft's Core fonts for the Web project were 2.x (e.g. 2.82 for Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New for MS Windows), published in 2000. Later versions (such as version 3 or version 5 with many new characters) were not available from this project. A Microsoft spokesman declared in 2002 that members of the open source community "will have to find different sources for updated fonts… Although the EULA did not restrict the fonts to just Windows and Mac OS they were only ever available as Windows .exe's and Mac archive files."
Even though the fonts are available from some third-party web sites (such as an anonymous SourceForge project) and are included with Mac OS, Håkon Wium Lie (Chief technical officer of Opera Software) cited the cancellation of the project as an example of Microsoft resisting interoperability.
In July 2007, Apple announced that it had renewed its licensing agreement with Microsoft for the use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.
Read more about this topic: Core Fonts For The Web
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