Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Julian Gilbey]

Hi Fabian,

That's a good point; I'm not sure about this, though, as I don't want
to suggest that this is a different font - it isn't, it's just a DFSG
packaging of the same font.

If there's a trademark issue, though, then of course that's a
different matter.

Best wishes,

   Julian

On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 01:31:31PM +0100, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> Hi Julian,
> this is highly appreciated, thanks for all the effort you put into this!
> I'd recommend to avoid the "awesome" part of the name altogether. Font Awesome
> upstream apparently changed his mind and had become rather hostile towards 
> open
> development, so we shouldn't give them more reason to feel under attack. 
> How about "font-dfsgsome" or "font-handsome" or whatever wordplay you like?
>  - Fabian 

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Julian Gilbey]

Hi Nathan,

On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:46:46PM +, Nathan Willis wrote:
> Please don't take the following info as stop-energy (which it's not), but 
> there
> is already an active project doing the task of liberating the no-longer-free
> symbols from Font Awesome, called ForkAwesome:
> https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome ... which has also added a fair
> number of new glyphs since it was founded (6+ years ago).

We have switched to ForkAwesome for (python3-)qtawesome following the
bug report about FontAwesome not being free.  Unfortunately, it has
not had a commit since December 2021 and no new icons since September
2021.  It has many, many fewer icons than FontAwesome, and in many
cases cannot be used as a replacement for it.

My proposal is *not* to create fonts which mimic FontAwesome.  The
only issue for Debian (as evidenced by the discussion in this bug
report) is that the fonts cannot be recreated from the SVG files.  The
license that upstream have used on their fonts and SVG files is
generously open, and their only (public) reason for not sharing their
build process publicly is that their commercial offerings use the same
infrastructure.

Therefore the only thing that I am proposing is writing an open-source
build structure for recreating the FontAwesome webfonts from the SVG
sources.  As most of the work has already been done by other people,
this should be relatively straightforward, and will be able to keep
up-to-date with upstream's font offerings.

The resulting webfonts should be drop-in replacements for the upstream
versions, offering exactly the same icons.

I hope that makes a little more sense.

Best wishes,

   Julian

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Nathan Willis]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:21 PM Julian Gilbey  wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:21:29PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > Quoting Julian Gilbey (2023-01-29 12:03:30)
> > > If you would like me to go ahead and work on this, please say.
> >
> > Sure I would like you to go ahead - why would I not want that?
> >
> > Sounds like a fun project, and Free, and beneficial to Debian.
>
> Great!
>
> > One thing you might consider is to name the resulting package something
> > (similar but) different than fontawesome, to not upset upstream
> > developers by hijacking their name for something arguably different.
>
> A good point.  I was thinking of creating a GitHub project called
> FontAwesome-DFSG, with a README explaining what is it, how it was
> created and how it is not endorsed by the FontAwesome "owners".  But
> I'm not sure what to call the Debian package - it is essentially just
> a repackaging of the FontAwesome fonts.  Perhaps we could call the
> source package fonts-font-awesome-dfsg, and the binary packages
> fonts-font-awesome-4.7, fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-5,
> fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-6 and fonts-font-awesome-dfsg (for the current
> version of the upstream font)?
>

Please don't take the following info as stop-energy (which it's not), but
there is already an active project doing the task of liberating the
no-longer-free symbols from Font Awesome, called ForkAwesome:
https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome ... which has also added a fair
number of new glyphs since it was founded (6+ years ago).

It's also already packaged for Debian. I certainly agree that it's a
problem that too many other packages pull in FoNT Awesome as a dependency,
but the harder work is in persuading maintainers to switch. Convincing them
to utilize a package that is already available to them would, I think, be
quicker. ForkAwesome certainly hasn't reached 100%, so maybe some people
will never make that switch.

But perhaps I misunderstand what you're wanting to do; if you are wanting
to do something different than what ForkAwesome already does, like just
build a new build script to show it can be done, I may be missing the
nuance.

However, If it's just about fixing the dependent packages, having two forks
of the original runs some risk of confusing people, and it does kind of
divide the community momentum.

Nate
-- 
nathan.p.willis
nwil...@glyphography.com 

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Fabian Greffrath]

Hi Julian,this is highly appreciated, thanks for all the effort you put into 
this!I'd recommend to avoid the "awesome" part of the name altogether. Font 
Awesome upstream apparently changed his mind and had become rather hostile 
towards open development, so we shouldn't give them more reason to feel under 
attack. How about "font-dfsgsome" or "font-handsome" or whatever wordplay you 
like? - Fabian Von meinem/meiner Galaxy gesendet
 Ursprüngliche Nachricht Von: Julian Gilbey  
Datum: 29.01.23  13:21  (GMT+01:00) An: Jonas Smedegaard  Cc: 
902...@bugs.debian.org, Bastian Germann  Betreff: Bug#902981: 
Font Awesome v5 in Debian On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:21:29PM +0100, Jonas 
Smedegaard wrote:> Quoting Julian Gilbey (2023-01-29 12:03:30)> > If you would 
like me to go ahead and work on this, please say.> > Sure I would like you to 
go ahead - why would I not want that?> > Sounds like a fun project, and Free, 
and beneficial to Debian.Great!> One thing you might consider is to name the 
resulting package something> (similar but) different than fontawesome, to not 
upset upstream> developers by hijacking their name for something arguably 
different.A good point.  I was thinking of creating a GitHub project 
calledFontAwesome-DFSG, with a README explaining what is it, how it wascreated 
and how it is not endorsed by the FontAwesome "owners".  ButI'm not sure what 
to call the Debian package - it is essentially justa repackaging of the 
FontAwesome fonts.  Perhaps we could call thesource package 
fonts-font-awesome-dfsg, and the binary packagesfonts-font-awesome-4.7, 
fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-5,fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-6 and fonts-font-awesome-dfsg 
(for the currentversion of the upstream font)?I'm open to ideas!Best wishes,   
Julian

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Julian Gilbey]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:21:29PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Julian Gilbey (2023-01-29 12:03:30)
> > If you would like me to go ahead and work on this, please say.
> 
> Sure I would like you to go ahead - why would I not want that?
> 
> Sounds like a fun project, and Free, and beneficial to Debian.

Great!

> One thing you might consider is to name the resulting package something
> (similar but) different than fontawesome, to not upset upstream
> developers by hijacking their name for something arguably different.

A good point.  I was thinking of creating a GitHub project called
FontAwesome-DFSG, with a README explaining what is it, how it was
created and how it is not endorsed by the FontAwesome "owners".  But
I'm not sure what to call the Debian package - it is essentially just
a repackaging of the FontAwesome fonts.  Perhaps we could call the
source package fonts-font-awesome-dfsg, and the binary packages
fonts-font-awesome-4.7, fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-5,
fonts-font-awesome-dfsg-6 and fonts-font-awesome-dfsg (for the current
version of the upstream font)?

I'm open to ideas!

Best wishes,

   Julian

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Julian Gilbey (2023-01-29 12:03:30)
> If you would like me to go ahead and work on this, please say.

Sure I would like you to go ahead - why would I not want that?

Sounds like a fun project, and Free, and beneficial to Debian.

One thing you might consider is to name the resulting package something
(similar but) different than fontawesome, to not upset upstream
developers by hijacking their name for something arguably different.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
 * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Julian Gilbey]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 04:47:35PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Bastian Germann (2023-01-24 16:28:59)
> > [...]
> > When you search Debian it turns out, Font Awesome 5 is around in A LOT of 
> > packages.
> > A good starting point is 
> > https://lintian.debian.org/tags/font-in-non-font-package.
> > It will take a lot of effort to get it out. I have started at #1025000.
> > 
> > I agree with Alexandre here but there seem to be people that ignore this 
> > sentiment
> > as you can see at #1027982. How would we go about it?
> 
> Thanks for looking into this, Bastian.
> 
> You are correct in filing such bugs with high severity.
> 
> If the reaction as seen with bug#1027982 is more widespread, you might
> consider adding a usertag to those bugreports, to ease later raising as
> a general concern to debian-devel the issue of relaxed treatment of
> licensing violations.

I am waiting for node-webfont to be accepted into the archive (it is
currently sitting in NEW).  Once that happens, I believe that I will
be able to take the DFSG-free SVG files and some other data files from
the upstream FontAwesome GitHub repository and build the FontAwesome 5
and 6 fonts from source.  I will base my code heavily on
https://github.com/Templarian/MaterialDesign-Font-Build; see what I've
done in a draft new version of the Material Design Icon font in my
experimental packages at
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/fonts-materialdesignicons-webfont
(though the change in version -2 getting rid of the fontname
distinctions turns out to be wrong and I will revert to the version -1
scheme some point soon).

This will mean that we will be able to ship a DFSG-free version of
FontAwesome 5 and 6 in Debian; the webfonts may well not be
byte-identical to the upstream versions, but they should be
functionally identical.  We can then ask the maintainers of the
packages shipping these fonts to replace the embedded fonts with links
to the DFSG-free versions.

If you would like me to go ahead and work on this, please say.
Practically speaking, this will be for bookworm+1 as there is no hope
of getting any new version of FontAwesome into bookworm at this point
- node-webfont is still waiting in NEW, and may not itself make it
into bookworm, so I won't try to do it until after the bookworm
release.  (I would add myself to the Uploaders, and make the source
package produce separate binary packages for FontAwesome 4.7, 5 and
6.  I would also ask for a review from the Debian Fonts Team list
before uploading.)

Best wishes,

   Julian

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Bastian Germann (2023-01-24 16:28:59)
> X-Debbugs-Cc: sebas...@xs4all.nl
> 
> On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 17:31:55 -0400 Alexandre Viau  wrote:
> > For software to be considered to be included in Debian, it must be free 
> > software. We try to evaluate whether or not something is free software 
> > by using the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)[1].
> > 
> > Font Awesome matches the DFSG on all points except one:
> > 
> >  > The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in 
> > source code as well as compiled form.
> > 
> > Font Awesome v5 is only available in compiled form, without the build 
> > tool. This makes it incompatible with our definition of Free Software.
> > 
> > To help explain our definition of source code, we often refer to "All 
> > sources in their preferred form of modification".
> > 
> > For example, minified JavaScript would fail that definition, even if it 
> > could technically be considered as modifiable code.
> > 
> > Is there something that could be done so that Font-Awesome v5 can match 
> > this interpretation of what is free software?
> > 
> > 1. https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> 
> When you search Debian it turns out, Font Awesome 5 is around in A LOT of 
> packages.
> A good starting point is 
> https://lintian.debian.org/tags/font-in-non-font-package.
> It will take a lot of effort to get it out. I have started at #1025000.
> 
> I agree with Alexandre here but there seem to be people that ignore this 
> sentiment
> as you can see at #1027982. How would we go about it?

Thanks for looking into this, Bastian.

You are correct in filing such bugs with high severity.

If the reaction as seen with bug#1027982 is more widespread, you might
consider adding a usertag to those bugreports, to ease later raising as
a general concern to debian-devel the issue of relaxed treatment of
licensing violations.

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
 * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Bastian Germann]

X-Debbugs-Cc: sebas...@xs4all.nl

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 17:31:55 -0400 Alexandre Viau  wrote:
For software to be considered to be included in Debian, it must be free 
software. We try to evaluate whether or not something is free software 
by using the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)[1].


Font Awesome matches the DFSG on all points except one:

 > The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in 
source code as well as compiled form.


Font Awesome v5 is only available in compiled form, without the build 
tool. This makes it incompatible with our definition of Free Software.


To help explain our definition of source code, we often refer to "All 
sources in their preferred form of modification".


For example, minified JavaScript would fail that definition, even if it 
could technically be considered as modifiable code.


Is there something that could be done so that Font-Awesome v5 can match 
this interpretation of what is free software?


1. https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines


When you search Debian it turns out, Font Awesome 5 is around in A LOT of 
packages.
A good starting point is 
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/font-in-non-font-package.
It will take a lot of effort to get it out. I have started at #1025000.

I agree with Alexandre here but there seem to be people that ignore this 
sentiment
as you can see at #1027982. How would we go about it?

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Paul Wise]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 5:45 AM Rob Madole wrote:

> if our build tool is required we can’t provide that.

Could you provide some details about why this is? It might be that we
can offer some ideas for ways forward if given more information.

For example you could adopt a new build toolchain for the open source
version of the font, while keeping the existing build tool for the
proprietary version.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Rob Madole]

On Sep 27, 2018, 4:31 PM -0500, Alexandre Viau , wrote:
>
> Is there something that could be done so that Font-Awesome v5 can match
> this interpretation of what is free software?

Ah, thanks for summarizing for me, Alexandre. There isn’t anything more we can 
do at the moment. While the license is compatible (MIT, SIL OFL 1.1, CC BY 4.0) 
if our build tool is required we can’t provide that. I’ll stay subscribed to 
this issue if there is any follow up.

Rob

Bug#902981: Font Awesome v5 in Debian

[Alexandre Viau]

On 2018-09-27 5:11 p.m., Rob Madole wrote:
I’m one of the core developers on the Font Awesome project. I can 
answer any specific questions and I’ll try and help where I can.


Thank you for getting in touch!



Probably the first question to get out of the way is: “Will Font 
Awesome open source their build tool?”


And the answer is no for the time being.

What are the other obstacles to getting version 5 added as a package?


There are no other obstacles.

To catch you up on the situation, here is a summary:

For software to be considered to be included in Debian, it must be free 
software. We try to evaluate whether or not something is free software 
by using the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)[1].


Font Awesome matches the DFSG on all points except one:

> The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in 
source code as well as compiled form.


Font Awesome v5 is only available in compiled form, without the build 
tool. This makes it incompatible with our definition of Free Software.


To help explain our definition of source code, we often refer to "All 
sources in their preferred form of modification".


For example, minified JavaScript would fail that definition, even if it 
could technically be considered as modifiable code.


Is there something that could be done so that Font-Awesome v5 can match 
this interpretation of what is free software?


1. https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

Thanks again,

--
Alexandre Viau
av...@debian.org