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

[Kay Sievers]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 1:56 AM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 01.12.13 10:05, David Herrmann (dh.herrmann at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>> I'm fine with installing the file into the system, but I doubt we win
>> much. It's meant as fallback for early-boot, initrd and so on. If we
>> keep it separate, we must make sure to include it in any systems we
>> build (initrd, containers, vms, ..). So if there's no reason beside
>> license issues, I'd like to keep it built-in.
>>
>> > So if it is acceptable for systemd-gfx *binary* to be GPLv2+ licensed,
>> > we could use the system unifont.hex file at build time, and actually
>> > link it into the binary. I propose that we try to go this way.
>>
>> That's what I currently do.
>>
>> > Or we could have the package also contain the converted font in appropriate
>> > format, and mmap it at runtime. But this is more complex, and doesn't actually
>> > avoid the licensing issue, since the font would still be GPLv2+.
>>
>> Where is the difference between build-time linking and mmap()?
>> (regarding licensing)
>> Also, where's the point of keeping libsystemd-gfx.so LGPL just to have
>> a *mandatory* dependency which is GPL?
>
> I think embedding the thing into our binary in question is the best
> choice here. I don't see any license problems, and it's certainly the
> fastest and most robust thing to do...

It is huge, ~2MB. We need to be sure that we will never have 2
different processes carrying it, it would be a waste of memory.

Storing it on disk and mmap()ing it from multiple different binaries
would be a fine alternative then, I think.

Kay