On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 05:51:40PM -0400, Reinhard Tartler wrote: > Thanks for your diligence and the massive effort by Jonas, Vasudev, > Pirate, Julian, and the rest of the team in navigating the complexities > of Font Awesome over the years. I'm following up from the DFSG team's > perspective, keeping the recent discussions in bug #1135180 and the > history of #902981 in mind regarding a compliant path for these icons. > > Our look at the 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg tree confirms that the > exclusion of the upstream src/ directory in debian/copyright was a > necessary move to purge several non-free blobs. Specifically, the > upstream src/assets/js/ directory contains minified versions of > prettify.js, respond.js, and ZeroClipboard.js without source, along with > a compiled Flash binary (ZeroClipboard.swf). > > While this exclusion correctly purges non-free blobs, it highlights that > the "preferred form for modification" for the icons (the individual SVG > files or FontForge project) is missing from the upstream distribution. > As it stands, the source package only carries generated font binaries > and a combined SVG font file. > > This finding aligns with the goals of bug #1135180. Although the Fork > Awesome project is now archived and defunct, its SIL OFL-licensed SVG > assets remain a valid source for the icons. A sustainable path forward > would involve using a modern, Debian-native build toolchain—such as > python3-fontforge or node-webfont—to generate the font binaries > directly from these SVG sources during the package build. We can provide > guidance on structuring a compliant source package and are happy to > review any proposed changes to ensure they meet archive standards > before your next upload. > > -rt on behalf of the DFSG team
Thanks Reinhard! I hadn't realised that ForkAwesome was archived, but so is FontAwesome 4.7.0. The fonts-fontawesome-free-legacy package is now in unstable - I built it from the SVG sources using Yadd and Roland Mas's Python script (copied from the node-fortawesome-fontawesome-free source package, which now builds version 7.x of FontAwesome from the SVG sources). ForkAwesome builds in a DFSG-free way using fontcustom (written by the ForkAwesome team, and found in Debian main). So the issue is only about the old 4.7.0 version of FontAwesome: do I understand the situation correctly that this is not considered DFSG-free in its current state, and so needs replacing throughout the archive (and not just in this one package)? If it needs replacing, ForkAwesome is probably a perfectly reasonable way to do so, as it is close to identical, but has an open source build system. It does not matter that the ForkAwesome project is dead. Also, as I noted, this is quite pervasive, as FontAwesome 4.7.0 fonts are included in hundreds of packages, though many of those will likely be resolved if a handful of generator packages (eg sphinx-rtd-theme) can be fixed. Best wishes, Julian
