[systemd-devel] [RFC 05/12] gfx: add sd-gfx library with unifont section

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sun, 01.12.13 06:28, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek (zbyszek at in.waw.pl) wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 07:48:40PM +0100, David Herrmann wrote:
> > As a first step, we add the required header+build-chain and add the
> > font-handling. To avoid heavy font-pipelines in systemd, we only provide
> > a statically-sized fallback-font based on GNU-Unifont.
> Hi David,
> I don't think that GNU-Unifont is licensed in a way that allows it to
> be embedded in systemd. Systemd is LGPLv2+, while Unifont is GPLv2+ +
> FontException.

I don't think this is really a problem, is it? LGPL2+ is after all
compatible wit GPL2+. When you link stuff that is LGPL2+ with stuff that
is GPL2+ you effectively just "downgrade" LGPL2+ to GPL2+, and get a
result that effectively should be treated as GPL2+ altogether.

Now, what matters for us is that all our APIs and our sources stay
LGPL2+, so that we can freely copy/paste code around and library users
can use the stuff with little restrictions. However, if systemd-consoled
at runtime is downgraded to GPL2+, then that should not really affect
anybody... I mean, if somebody wanted to link non-free code into
consoled, then we'd have a problem, but nobody does that and consoled is
not a program where that's even something to think off.

I'd be fine to do with unifont what we do with the pci/usb-db, and ship
it in the sources, and provide an easy way to update it from upstream
(via a make target).

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat