Arphic Technology Co., Ltd. ) is a type foundry

Type foundry

A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...

 based in Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 (Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...

), founded in May 1990.

Arphic PL Fonts

Arphic Technology is the creator of the Arphic PL Fonts (文鼎自由字型), including AR PL KaitiM Big5 (文鼎 PL 中楷), AR PL Mingti2L Big5 (文鼎 PL 細上海宋), AR PL SungtiL GB (文鼎 PL 簡報宋) and AR PL KaitiM GB (文鼎 PL 簡中楷), which are used by some Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

s (incl. Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

, Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, etc.) as part of their default CJK fonts. The CJKUnifonts project was derived from these Arphic PL Fonts.

The above four fonts were released in 2001. In 2010, Arphic Technology released another two fonts, AR PL MingU20-L (文鼎 PL 明體) and AR PL BaoSong2GBK (文鼎 PL 報宋).

All these fonts are licensed under Arphic Public License.

Meiryo

As a partner of C&G Inc., Arphic Technology was one of the designers of Kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

s in C&G's Meiryo

Meiryo

is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista on Japanese systems....

 (明瞭) font, intended for Japanese

Japanese writing system

The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...

.

Arphic Public License

Arphic Public License, published by Arphic Technology, was recognized by Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 as a copyleft

Copyleft

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...

 free software license and incompatible with the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

. But as it is used for fonts in Linux distributions, the incompatibility does not cause a problem.