Freedom Issue #2334
[otf-font-awesome][ttf-font-awesome] LICENSE asks to use brand icons only to represent the company, product, or service to which they refer
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Description
Please refer to the last sentence of the LICENSE file for FontAwesome:
https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/5.9.0/LICENSE.txt
I'm not sure if this polite request impose any legal limitations on usage of brand logos. If it does, then probably the package will need to be blacklisted. It is possible to just remove "Font Awesome 5 Brands-Regular-400.*tf" files from the package in [libre].
Related issues
History
Updated by bill-auger almost 4 years ago
- Status changed from unconfirmed to confirmed
the license on both github and the fontawesome website indicate the license as "SIL OFL 1.1" - the license on the fontawesome website does not add that extra trademark restriction
https://fontawesome.com/license/free
the OFL website presents itself prominently as being FSDG and DFSG compliant; but item #1 of the actual license seems to me would be at odds with the FSDG
1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components,
in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.
https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL#6c6c80bc
https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=OFL_web
aside from that, we just blacklisted some awesome fonts yesterday - i assume these are the same collection - those are denoted as MIT licensed - now that i looked into it more, that seems to be incorrect information - these are denoted with 'custom:OFL' which is probably more correct - generally, any license that arch demotes as 'custom' is potentially problematic for the FSDG - i assume the 'custom' bit is due to the trademark restriction
whatever the license, id say the value of these is miniscule at most - i seriously doubt that anyone wants them - frankly, i am surprised that anyone even noticed they existed
Updated by grizzlyuser almost 4 years ago
As I understood, font files are under OFL, which is a free license. FSF has a comment about selling requirement:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SILOFL
FSDG says "The information, and the source, must be provided under an appropriate free license."
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.en.html#license-rules
So I see no conflict of the SIL OFL with FSDG.
The code (like .css, .js and other files from their repo) are MIT licensed, so no issue here too.
So only request about brand logos looks problematic. Since FontAwesome 5, brands logos are in a separate font file, only that file can be removed from the package, if there's a need. Other font files shouldn't contain them. The file from recently blacklisted package (awesome-terminal-fonts) is FontAwesome 4, which had everything in one file AFAIK.
Let's not remove the font entirely. Lots of websites use it for scalable icons, and Firefox based browsers can be configured to use only system fonts instead of web fonts, even if src: local(font) is not provided in CSS @font-face at-rule. This way it's possible to save bandwidth and reduce attack surface in case of font rendering engine vulnerabilities, while still seing icons on websites.
Updated by bill-auger almost 4 years ago
i was not clear enough about the FSDG - what i meant, was that it would not meet the FSDG, if the FSDG treated artwork the same as code - it does not; but parabola does, in the name of "artistic freedom"
Updated by theova almost 4 years ago
grizzlyuser wrote:
So only request about brand logos looks problematic. Since FontAwesome 5, brands logos are in a separate font file, only that file can be removed from the package, if there's a need. Other font files shouldn't contain them. The file from recently blacklisted package (awesome-terminal-fonts) is FontAwesome 4, which had everything in one file AFAIK.
Let's not remove the font entirely.
I second this.This font is useful in zsh, vim, polybar, ... It would be a pitty to loose all of them, because of the unfree ones.
Updated by bill-auger 11 months ago
- Related to Freedom Issue #2331: [awesome-terminal-fonts] Contains at least one nonfree logo added