The last sentence from Sean Cavanaugh's justification for the FontSite fonts says a lot:

You have to keep in mind that holding a copyright does not preclude one from entering into licensing and distribution arrangements as many companies did with URW.

Sean firmly maintains that he has been granted a distribution license to many URW/ATF/Softmaker fonts when he was employed by SoftMaker/ATF. And I remember buying his book when I graduated college in the mid nineties that included many of these fonts in the jacket CD. He's been distributing them for a long time.

Have you considered contacting FontSite and asking directly?

No as I'm not a lawyer, I just find it strange as it changed names but keeping the first one the same (Mistral > Malaga > Malacca ; Opus > Optima etc).

It isn't likely you will get a reply. I sent an email to him a month or so ago asking about something to do with one of his fonts and never received a reply.

I'm not sure what you mean. Looks like Malaga was the name Softmaker gave it's version of Mistral. Perhaps FontSite needed to differentiate from them.

Sean Cavanaugh's justification for the FontSite fonts

I remember that thread! What a blast from the past.

hhp

Ok thanks for the infos. I didn't consider the possibility of acquiring copyrights in this case, and as I didn't find fonsite listed on fontshop nor myfonts, I wondered what’s going on ;-)