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

Hi Debian legal list!

I'd appreciate your suggestions on how best to manage this issue that
I've discovered, and a judgement call on whether it is an issue - see
below.  I've cc'd the current bug report.

Best wishes,

   Julian

----- Forwarded message from Julian Gilbey <[email protected]> -----

Date: Wed, 13 May 2026 22:27:00 +0100
=46rom: Julian Gilbey <[email protected]>
Subject: DFSG status of fonts-font-awesome (was: Re: Bug#902981: new upstre=
am
	(5.1.0))
To: Bastian Germann <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], Debian developers list
	<[email protected]>

affects 902981 src:aiodogstatsd src:ataqv src:bazel-bootstrap src:debci src=
:ipywidgets src:kanboard src:node-webfont src:orthanc-dicomweb src:pagure s=
rc:publican src:r-cran-shiny src:r-cran-visnetwork src:scaphandre src:sphin=
x-rtd-theme src:igraph src:mdbook src:lcdf-typetools ataqv bepasty bornagai=
n-doc crmsh-doc debci dpdk-doc drbd-doc ford gerbera glances-doc glbinding-=
doc hackrf-doc icecast2 janus-demos jupyterhub kanboard libigraph-doc lible=
monldap-ng-portal-perl mitmproxy mkdocs odoo-19 openmpi-doc otrs2 pagure pr=
ewikka publican python-aiodogstatsd-doc python-aioitertools-doc python-mint=
py-doc python-qtawesome-common python-sphinx-mdinclude-doc python3-ase pyth=
on3-cylc python3-django-hyperkitty python3-django-postorius python3-djangor=
estframework python3-flask-bootstrap python3-openstackdocstheme python3-xst=
atic-font-awesome r-cran-bookdown r-cran-rmarkdown r-cran-shiny r-cran-visn=
etwork reform-desktop-full rust-doc screenkey simple-whip-server sphinx-rtd=
-theme-common sreview-web swappy sympa texlive-fonts-extra-links tulip webe=
xt-foxyproxy weechat-doc wims wims-lti wsjtx-doc wsjtx-improved-doc
thanks

[Cc-ing debian-devel as there is a question about a mass bug filing at
the end of this email; please Cc the bug report in any replies.]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 10:07:53PM +0200, Bastian Germann wrote:
> Please note that node-fortawesome-fontawesome-free builds the
> fortawesome v6 from source now. So there is a chance that we can update
> this package as well.

Also, in #1135180, Bastian wrote:

> When you are dealing with the fonts-font-awesome package please consider =
all
> its reverse (build) dependencies.
>=20
> You should not make it hard on other package maintainers, i.e. please do =
not
> make them transition manually unnecessarily.

Dear all readers of this bug report,

[I have marked all of the packages in unstable which build-depend or
depend on fonts-font-awesome as "affected" by this bug, as this may
well affect you significantly.]

I have just packaged fonts-font-awesome-legacy, containing DFSG-free
versions of Font Awesome 5 and 6, and it has been accepted into
unstable.  I next intend to upgrade the fonts-font-awesome package
itself to version 7.x of the font.

I was looking at including version 4.7.0 of FontAwesome in the legacy
package to support other packages which need this specific legacy
version, without requiring maintainers to make any major changes to
their packages except to (build-)depend on the legacy package rather
than the fonts-font-awesome package.  But I've hit a major stumbling
block...

To summarise most of the discussion in this bug report (#902981):
FontAwesome's build system became closed-source in version 5.x, so
Debian can't distribute it, and we have to stick with version 4.7.0.
Therefore fonts-font-awesome was downgraded from 5.1.0 back to 4.7.0.

However, looking at the source package for fonts-font-awesome (which
is the upstream 4.7.0 version), I cannot find any evidence of a build
system.  Nor do I find any source for the icons in the GitHub
repository or any build system there (looking at the 4.x branch).
Indeed, the Debian package simply copies the compiled fonts (TTF, OTF
and so on) into the appropriate directories under /usr.  So it seems
that the package as-is is actually not DFSG-free in the same way that
the 5.x version isn't: there is no "source code".  And 4.x is even
worse than 5.x: while the SVG sources are included in the GitHub
repository in version 5.1.0 upwards (first committed to the repository
in June 2018), they do not appear before that, so there is no hope of
making a DFSG-free build of FontAwesome 4.7.0.  (The SVG sources are
embedded in the SVG font, but that is not the original source of the
icons.)

My proposal is therefore the following:

- FontAwesome 4.7.0 should be dropped from Debian completely.  This is
  a big deal, though; over 500 packages in testing ship
  fontawesome-webfont.woff2  But if I've read the situation correctly,
  that is the direction we should be heading in, though that's far
  beyond my capacity to manage.  See below for some further thoughts
  on this.

- fonts-font-awesome is upgraded to version 7.x of the upstream font,
  in TTF and WOFF2 formats, using a home-grown DFSG-free build system
  (courtesy of Roland Mas and Yadd, who wrote this for the
  node-fortawesome-fontawesome-free package); this package will no
  longer contain any other formats of the font, nor any CSS/LESS/JS
  code.

- fonts-font-awesome-legacy provides versions 5 and 6 of the font in
  TTF and WOFF2 formats, again built in a DFSG-free way.

This will resolve the DFSG-free nature of this package.

Old package file layout (fonts only):

/usr/share/fonts/opentype/font-awesome/FontAwesome.otf
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.ttf
/usr/share/fonts-font-awesome/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot
/usr/share/fonts-font-awesome/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg
/usr/share/fonts-font-awesome/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff
/usr/share/fonts-font-awesome/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff2

Proposed new package file layout (fonts only):

/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-awesome/fa-brands-400.ttf
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-awesome/fa-regular-400.ttf
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-awesome/fa-solid-900.ttf
/usr/share/fonts/woff/font-awesome/fa-brands-400.woff2
/usr/share/fonts/woff/font-awesome/fa-regular-400.woff2
/usr/share/fonts/woff/font-awesome/fa-solid-900.woff2

Those packages that require the JS/CSS files or SVG version of the
font should migrate to using node-fortawesome-fontawesome-free which
provides these.  LESS files are no longer provided by upstream.

If there is a pressing need for one of the other formats of version
7.x of the the font (EOT, SVG or WOFF), then I can use the fontcustom
or node-webfont package to generate these.  But if not, I can stick
with the Python script written by Yadd and Roland as I used that
before I discovered fontcustom.

It would be good to upload a new version of fonts-font-awesome to
experimental soon, but will wait a while before making any changes to
unstable, in order to allow for a smooth transition.


Further thoughts on removing FontAwesome 4.7.0 from Debian:

* It seems that fonts-fork-awesome should be an almost drop-in
  replacement for those packages that require version 4.7.0 of
  FontAwesome; it provides (I believe) a superset of the icons, along
  with the CSS etc files.  So making this change should be relatively
  straightforward (though a moderate amount of work).

* Most of the binary packages that ship fontawesome-webfont.woff2 seem
  to have it as a static file in a local set of webpages.  And this is
  presumably imported by something like sphinx-rtd-theme.  So we can
  probably handle most of the cases by modifying just a handful of
  packages.

Questions:

(1) Have I understood the situation correctly regarding the DFSG-free
nature of FontAwesome 4.7.0?

(2) Should I do a mass bug filing against all of the potentially
affected packages (as listed in the "affects" BTS command above) once
I have uploaded fonts-font-awesome 7.x to experimental or to unstable,
as many or all of them will need to make changes to either migrate to
ForkAwesome or to accommodate the new structure of FontAwesome 7.x?

Best wishes,

   Julian

----- End forwarded message -----