Fix for #89 - clarify font licensing

[peterbrittain]

Hopefully this is everything we agreed...

• Fonts now separated out into 2 directories
• Makefule updated to make it easy to build minimal or full font definitions
• Docs updated to say what's happened.

I didn't go for the BDF files in the end as I wasn't so sure about the legality, while the other explicit license text was much more reassuring.

Are we good to go?

[peterbrittain]

Didn't spot the tests... They should work now.

[pwaller]

@LyesSaadi, can I ask if you were able to review the moves of the fonts themselves for conformance with your expectations? I am happy to accept this so long as there are multiple opinions as to whether the partitioning of fonts is correct.

The other changes look good to me, aside from a minor typo.

[peterbrittain]

Typo fixed. All ready to go... Just waiting for LyesSaadi.

[pwaller]

Please feel free to shamelessly ping this thread weekly. The best time to do so is 2100 UTC on Thursdays, which maximizes the likelihood of my chances of responding over the weekend. Thanks to all involved, and if I don't respond timely it's not that I don't consider this effort valuable but just that I'm swamped :)

[LyesSaadi]

So, I looked into each individual font file again.

Every single file, except the FIGlet fonts, have their license included in the header, which is great. So, the only thing missing would be to add FIGlet's BSD, as that is a requirement from the License (Unless those files are not under BSD, but I remember reading that they were indeed subject to it.):

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

It is common to add such licenses in the same directory (or in a "licenses" subdirectory) of the copyrighted fonts, as well as the list of fonts in question in the License text or in a separate file.

Also, I notice that some fonts from FIGlet are missing. This is just something I remarked, and nothing to do with this PR, so if this is a deliberate choice, please just ignore this remark.

[peterbrittain]

So... I think you're saying I should insert the original BSD license in the standard figlet font files (and check again what flf files are missing). Right? If so, I can probably do that over the weekend...

BTW, I don't think we need the flc files as these are just character mappings for non-standard code pages (which pyfiglet has been working with happily for many a year).

[LyesSaadi]

Just dropping the License file somewhere is enough. Putting it in the header could be practical for consistency, but is not mandatory. It's just that it is a requirement for BSD.

[peterbrittain]

OK - I've now updated each font file with the original BSD license and tested they still work on a new build.

I also took the latest files from figlet just to make sure that we weren't accidentally pulling in dodgy versions from elsewhere. This added a new character to the standard font (in case you spotted that!).

I think that's it!

[peterbrittain]

@LyesSaadi - just checking... Are you happy with the license update?

[LyesSaadi]

Oops, sorry, I forgot to answer. And to answer, yes, I'm happy with all that 🎉! That was awesome work from you!

I will also try & re-open the discussion with Fedora Legal later this week!

[peterbrittain]

@pwaller - looks like we're good to go... Are you happy with the new changes?

[pwaller]

Thanks both.

@LyesSaadi

I will also try & re-open the discussion with Fedora Legal later this week!

Can I check what open questions remain here? I take it we're good to go?

[LyesSaadi]

Can I check what open questions remain here? I take it we're good to go?

Yes, we're good to go!

I'm only referring to the remaining fonts (those in the contrib/ directory) as John Cowan suggested that FIGlet fonts may be considered as insufficiently creative to be copyright-able. The issue is that there is no clear ruling toward FIGlet fonts specifically. So, I will open a discussion with Fedora Legal to ask for their view on that, and we'll maybe be able to get all the remaining fonts (and potentially all existing FIGlet fonts) into Fedora (and other Linux distributions).

This was a question which was actually already opened in the past with the figlet package (~2006-2012), but I couldn't find any conclusion from Fedora Legal toward the question, and the figlet package ended up being exclusively distributed with Open-Source fonts. But it could also be that the discussion was just lost, as Fedora changed its means of internal communication since.