Bug#902981: Font-Awesome 5 no build system DFSG compatibility
On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 6:38 AM, Alexis Murzeau wrote:
> I have a question regarding the font-awesome v5 [0] and the DFSG.
>
> Since version 5, font-awesome upstream repository contains both source
> files and generated files but not the build system [1].
I would like to point out here that the build system exists, but is
both secret and proprietary, because upstream have a proprietary
version of the fonts that they are selling:
"Because Font Awesome sales a Pro version our build system will for
the time being remain private (we've got all of our for-pay icons in
there)."
> So it is not possible to regenerate generated files from source files
> without guessing which file are generated and which are sources.
> I've asked upstream about that [2] (but no response yet).
Personally, I don't consider things proper Free Software unless they
are built using an automatic, repeatable and
reproducible/deterministic mechanism from freely licensed source using
only tools that are themselves proper Free Software. Modification of
that source also must be possible using only tools that are themselves
proper Free Software. In addition I don't accept something as proper
Free Software if upstream has created one form of data from another,
truer, source form, thrown away the source form (or never saved it)
and then distributes only the prebuilt form, which they use as if it
were source but in truth intend to keep it read-only.
Debian's standards are somewhat lower, we require source be available
and DFSG-freely licensed. In addition the ftp-master policy (not sure
about the rest of Debian) has a policy that packages be buildable (but
not necessarily built) using tools only in main. We don't yet require
an automated build process, we don't yet require rebuilding from
source by Debian, we don't yet require reproducible/deterministic
builds, we don't have a policy about tools to modify the source, we
err on the side of taking upstream's word for it about source and we
don't have any policy about what counts as proper source.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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