Re: Seeking pre-approval for unifont update for Lenny

["Paul Hardy" <unifoundry@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Paul Hardy <unifoundry@gmail.com> wrote:
> In speaking with Debian Developer Changwoo Ryu, maintainer of bf-utf,
> xfonts-baekmuk, and other packages, he told me that the Hanterm fonts
> have previously been removed from Debian because of concerns over
> ambiguity of their license.
> ...
> I got the copy of the Hanterm fonts that I used in the "unifont"
> package from a FreeBSD distribution that stated that those fonts were
> released under GPL.  Fedora also listed them under GPL.  However, if
> there was concern over ambiguity with the licensing of those fonts in
> Debian in the past enough to cause their removal elsewhere in Debian,
> it seems necessary to remove any trace of them from the "unifont"
> package (and anywhere else they might still be lurking unnoticed).
>

Here is what I've been able to find:

* 1 Nov 1999: Chu-yeon Park posts ITP for hanterm,
hanterm-fonts-johab, with follow-ups suggesting xfonts-johab as a
better name for the font package.  These fonts are the same that were
used to generate Hangul in every version of the Debian "unifont"
package, past and present.  See
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/11/msg00004.html

* The listing for the hanterm package in potato,
http://archive.debian.net/potato/hanterm, shows package xfonts-johab
as not available, but does show the xfonts-baekmuk package as
available.  Changwoo Ryu is the current maintainer of xfonts-baekmuk.

* The original hanterm package became hanterm-classic, and wasn't
included in the etch release.

* No reported bugs for xfonts-johab are archived at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?package=xfonts-johab

* Various build records found on the net complain that a "Suggests:
xfonts-johab" dependency can't be met for hanterm in potato.

I could not find an actual message saying "we must remove the
xfonts-johab package from Debian because..."

Changwoo Ryu was involved with the 1999 hanterm thread.  I'll go on
his memory that xfonts-johab was removed because of concerns with
ambiguity of the licensing for those fonts.

Can I replace the existing Hangul Syllables block in the unifont
package with ones that Changwoo Ryu added to his bf-utf-source copy of
unifont.bdf to avoid any potential concerns?


Paul Hardy
GPG Key ID: E6E6E390