[Pkg-fonts-devel] Greetings

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Nicolas,

Quoting Nicolas Spalinger (2017-03-31 11:16:42)
> I agree that fonts should be like any other software and build from source completely and that's the end-goal I (and others) have been working towards.
> It's proving MUCH harder than expected.
> The difficulty of maintaining fontforge has probably shown Debian maintainers how difficult this whole business of font toolchain actually is...
> The work on the licensing layer (establishing the Open Font License) was the first step, we've been tackling the reproducible buildpath for a while now.
> 
> Thankfully others in the type design communities are tackling that 
> conundrum too. IMHO Google's Noto toolchain is one good example. 
> (scoop: they don't use FontForge). We are going for something more 
> generic that other projects and maintainers can use.

For the record: I am directly involved in packaging fonts-noto.  And I 
am seriously considering moving that package to contrib, after becoming 
more aware of the upstream development process (I thought Google bought 
finalized fonts and rebranded them without expecting further development 
- but it is now clear that they do continuous further refinement - 
seemingly in a way not possible to replicate using purely Free tool).

I am quite curious to learn more about your approach - especially the 
part that you have succeeded in moving to Free tools.  Because - apart 
from you making great fonts which is obviously great in itself - that 
can serve as inspiration for other font makers.


> Are you going to remove every single TTF from main (bar the handful 
> that are really self-built) in the meantime?
> Do you think this will be useful for Debian users?
> I somehow doubt this is the best course of action. 
[...]
> I'm keen on hearing what other active members of pkg-fonts think. 

I appreciate this discussion, and your efforts torwards transparency and 
use of Free tools.  I also understand how it is not easy.

As Paul already pointed out, your current fonts needing non-free build 
tools can be part of the "contrib" area loosy related to Debian, and 
when Free tools and/or your use of them evolve, we can ideally include 
the fonts with Debian proper.

Statistics for freedom-friendly fonts are not great.  But that is not an 
argument for giving up on improving - quite the contrary: I envision 
that Debian gradually enforces more strongly our core principles to 
treat fonts not as data¹ but as code, and apply same requirements for 
Free licensing not only of the end product but also for the tools to 
create and maintain the product.

It is unfair that you get "punished" by being transparent about your use 
of non-free tools.  In my opinion Debian should value your somehwat-free 
fonts higher than lesser-free fonts, not by including somewhat-free 
fonts in main - that would be unfair to fully-free fonts - but by 
excluding lesser-free fonts from main.


 - Jonas


¹ Arguably only code (not graphics or spreadsheets or "blobs" for wifi 
chips) need freedoms.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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