"fonts-ubuntu" package is marked as non-free

Debian doesn’t consider the Ubuntu Font Licence to be free; that’s why this package was uploaded (after all these years) to non-free.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

fonts-ubuntu is shipped by default on Ubuntu systems. It has significant reverse dependencies and cannot be uninstalled easily. Debian considers fonts-ubuntu to be “non-free” while Canonical disagrees.

Recently I have seen two Ask Ubuntu questions where users have run vrms, found fonts-ubuntu to be non-free, and tried to uninstall the package:

* https://askubuntu.com/q/1292336

* https://askubuntu.com/q/1292751

This situation is unfortunate, and the explanation is that the control file states "non-free". Given the difference in opinion, the control file should not state "non-free" when building for Ubuntu.

This bug was fixed in the package fonts-ubuntu - 0.83-4ubuntu2

---------------
fonts-ubuntu (0.83-4ubuntu2) hirsute; urgency=medium

  * Change directly the section in the control rather than using a
    vendor override of the gencontrol target, that's not upstreamable to
    Debian but easier for now.

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * debian/rules:
    - Don't state section "non-free" when building for Ubuntu, and
      prevent with that the packages from getting listed as non-free
      when running vrms on Ubuntu (LP: #1754804).

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Nov 2020 15:31:20 +0100

Submitted an equivalent proposal to Debian:

https://salsa.debian.org/fonts-team/fonts-ubuntu/-/merge_requests/1

> fonts-ubuntu is shipped by default on Ubuntu systems. It has significant reverse dependencies and cannot be uninstalled easily. Debian considers fonts-ubuntu to be “non-free” while Canonical disagrees.

I'm sorry, can you please link to where is written that "Canonical disagrees"? This is the first I'm reading about that Canonical interpretation, while in other issues...

* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-licence/+bug/1167425 was marked as confirmed in 2013;
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-licence/+bug/769874 is still open with the understanding that it is a non-free license, and its 'fix' for debian was actually to mark the package as non-free (which we ow reverted here).

That's my interpretation of the discussions you linked to and other discussions on a related Debian bug. Maybe the word "disagrees" was not used anywhere. What's your reason for bringing it up?

Well, it seems to me that we have a discrepancy here: either (for Canonical/on Ubuntu) the UFL is non-free or it isn't. If it is, then the other two issues are correctly open, but the fix in here (no longer marking this font as non-free) is wrong. On the other hand, if the UFL isn't non-free, this issue was correctly fixed, but the other issues should be closed.

My personal understanding used to be that the license was non-free, the confirmed state on #1167425 a sign that it being non-free wasn't disputed, and I was hopefully waiting for a resolution - but this change on fonts-ubuntu package (and the comment cited above, jusifying it) ended up confusing me. I'm bringing this up with the hope of finding clarity.

Well, if Canonical had agreed on fonts-ubuntu being non-free, it would have been sorted in the restricted pocket of the Ubuntu archive. But it's not. It's in main, i.e. the Canonical supported free software.

I can agree that 100% clarity would have been better, but we are not there. The change made as a "fix" of this bug was a pragmatic step to address the situation described above.