On 2009-01-28 at 10:08:01 -0500, "Nicolas Mailhot" nicolas.mailhot@laposte.net wrote:
If we start worrying about this we may as well refuse to package all the fonts that do not include full licensing information in their metadata, since nothing would stop the hypothetical third-party to re-distribute the font files without the detached license file anyway (regardless in which package we deploy it)
Apologies in advance, I read the original emails rather early this morning, and my brain was not yet fully booted. :) In addition, I had forgotten that each font package/subpackage in a family requires the -common package, so in normal operation, there is no way a font package installed would end up without the license also present.
As Nicolas points out, we're doing due diligence here to ensure that the license is installed along with the font package in the normal, expected method of installation. In addition, any Fedora spin will pull in the appropriate -common package onto the distribution media (whether it is a Live spin or not), so it is incredibly unlikely that someone would be able to make a release with the licensing missing. In fact, the only way they'd be able to accomplish this is by explicitly ignoring dependencies or blocking the -common package (or installing with --nodocs), and all of these could be construed as passing the responsibility for licensing compliance from Fedora and on to the poor fool who decided to poke their packaging structure with a sharp stick.
To sum it up: It is my opinion that it is not necessary to include the font license in each font package/subpackage as long as it is present in the -common package, and each of the font package/subpackages properly Requires the -common package.
Roozbeh, thanks for pointing this out, and apologies for not thinking this all the way through before replying initially.
~spot
On Wednesday 28 January 2009, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
To sum it up: It is my opinion that it is not necessary to include the font license in each font package/subpackage as long as it is present in the -common package, and each of the font package/subpackages properly Requires the -common package.
And by the way, if it would be necessary even given the above, the issue would not be limited to fonts packages at all but would apply lots of other subpackage splits in the distro as well.