Re: Bug#902981: DFSG status of fonts-font-awesome (was: Re: Bug#902981: new upstream (5.1.0))

On Monday, May 18, 2026 10:44:34 PM Mountain Standard Time Julian Gilbey 
wrote:
> I don't know where that puts us now.  Can we say that FontAwesome of
> any version is DFSG-free, given that the original sources are not
> available for any version of the font?  How do we move forward?
> debian-legal - your input here would be most welcome.

I cannot speak for the entire debian-legal community, but as one of the more 
prolific posters on the list, these are my thoughts.

1.  SVG is not always the preferred form of modification for fonts, but it 
*can be* the preferred form of modification for fonts.  This is similar to 
HTML, which sometimes is the original file and other times was generated from 
something else that was the original file.

2.  It is clear that SVG was not the preferred form of modification for the 
original FontAwesome project.

3.  It isn’t clear to me without doing further research if SVG was the 
preferred form of modification for the ForkAwesome project.

4.  Seeing as how both FontAwesome and ForkAwesome are now archived projects, 
they are not receiving further modifications upstream.

5.  Because it is possible for us to build the ForkAwesome fonts from SVG in 
Debian, because SVG can be considered an valid source format for fonts, and 
because the upstream ForkAwesome files are no longer being modified, I don’t 
think there is a significant DFSG concern to using them as the source files 
for the purpose of packaging.

6.  If someone is concerned about #5, it would be possible for someone to fork 
ForkAwesome, give it a new name, and, for the purposes of the fork, declare 
that the SVG files are now the preferred form of modification and that any 
future modifications will be made by directly editing those files.  Then, that 
fork could be packaged in Debian.

It is possible that I have missed something or misunderstood the situation in 
some way, so I would appreciate any critiques of the above.

> And Rob - if
> you are able to give any advice here, that would also be welcome.  We
> *do* want to keep FontAwesome around - it is so amazing (awesome?!)
> and so ubiquitous!



-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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