[GNU-linux-libre] Adding Inferno to GNU Guix: font issues.

[Diego Nicola Barbato]

Hello folks,

I have written a package definition for adding Inferno [1] to GNU Guix
[2].  While trying to determine if Inferno is compatible with the FSDG
some questions concerning bundled fonts and licensing arose, which I was
unable to answer myself, so it was suggested that I ask for advice on
this mailing list [3].
In this mail I will only ask about the font issues.  I will address the
licensing issues in a separate thread.

The ‘fonts’ directory in the Inferno source tree (as provided by this
[4] mercurial repository) contains a variety of fonts in a format [5]
native to Inferno (and Plan 9).  Some of these fonts (‘lucidasans’,
‘pelm’, ‘lucida’ and ‘lucm’) are non-free (copyright Bigelow & Holmes
[6]) and I took care to remove them from the source.  Among the
remaining fonts ‘jis’ and ‘misc’ are derived from X (according to their
respective README [7][8]) and ‘vera’ is probably derived from ‘Bitstream
Vera’, whereas ‘big5’ [9], ‘courier’, ‘gb’ and ‘minitel’ are of unclear
origin.  Finally ‘charon’, ‘chinese’, and ‘minicharon’ simply reuse
"subfonts" from the previously mentioned fonts.
It should be further noted that IIUC it is implied by the NOTICE [10] in
the root of the source tree that the fonts which do not have their own
license are GPLv2+.

Is it enough to remove the non-free fonts in order to make Inferno
compatible with the FSDG, or are there further issues, namely that the
fonts can not be rebuilt from source (i.e. there is no source) and that
the origin of some of them is unclear?

Greetings

Diego


[1]: http://inferno-os.org
[2]: https://gnu.org/software/guix
[3]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-10/msg00440.html
[4]: https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os
[5]:

font
Description: man/6/font

[6]:

LICENCE
Description: fonts/LICENSE

[7]:

README
Description: fonts/jis/README

[8]:

README
Description: fonts/misc/README

[9]:

README
Description: fonts/big5/README

[10]:

NOTICE
Description: NOTICE