Re: Questions regarding fonts from I shot the Serif
On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 1:48 AM Mauro Meloni wrote:
> 1. IANAL, but it would seem the fonts published in [2] are non-free, not because the license (they seem to be MIT-Style licensed [5]) but because the developer does not provide the sources. Am I guessing right?
In 2005 these fonts were not under the MIT-style license they are now,
so they used to be non-free because of the license and now are under a
free license:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060926011338/http://www.squaregear.net/fonts/
The fonts don't appear to contain any clear indication (such as in the
"TTF Names" section in FontForge) of how they were developed. I'm not
aware of any tools to detect that sort of thing based on the font file
structure (if they exist I would love to know about them). So the
existing releases give no way to know if the .ttf files are the source
or not the source. So the only way to find that out is to talk to the
designer and ask them how they change the fonts, what tools they use,
what source formats they prefer and so on.
Side note: if you contact them, please suggest moving the donation
instructions out of the license text, since in the future if his site
disappears from the Internet and someone else wants to continue
distributing and maintaining the fonts, they will be obliged to keep
the now-incorrect donation information in the license, which would be
confusing for potential donors.
> 2. Even so, I'd be glad to add these fonts to the non-free Debian repository, however I dunno whats the policy on non-free fonts? do you debianites avoid packaging them? if I'm the only one interested then my quest is pointless.
There are a small number of non-free font packages in Debian:
fonts-ipafont-nonfree-jisx0208 fonts-ipafont-nonfree-uigothic
fonts-larabie-deco fonts-larabie-straight fonts-larabie-uncommon
fonts-mikachan fonts-moe-standard-kai fonts-moe-standard-song
fonts-ubuntu fonts-ubuntu-console gsfonts-other xfonts-naga10
I expect there are a large number of non-free font files in Debian
main, every time I bothered to look for them and file bugs I found
several. I've stopped looking many years ago and I don't think anyone
else bothers to look these days. In case you do, there is a bug
template here:
https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts#Bugs
https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts/Bugs/non-free
Personally I avoid using and packaging non-free things and would try
to work on making non-free things free if I couldn't switch to an
alternative existing free thing. Other folks have no problem with
using, packaging and sponsoring non-free things
> 3. If there is interest, should I file an RFP bug? an ITP? follow the guidelines in [6]?
RFP is for when you want someone else to do the work, ITP is for when
you want to do the work yourself (and have someone else review and
upload your work). I'm not sure how up-to-date the fonts packaging
policy wiki page is, but in general it probably is a good idea to look
at it and fix it if needed.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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