Thanks for your diligence and the massive effort by Jonas, Vasudev, Pirate, Julian, and the rest of the team in navigating the complexities of Font Awesome over the years. I'm following up from the DFSG team's perspective, keeping the recent discussions in bug #1135180 and the history of #902981 in mind regarding a compliant path for these icons.
Our look at the 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg tree confirms that the exclusion of the upstream src/ directory in debian/copyright was a necessary move to purge several non-free blobs. Specifically, the upstream src/assets/js/ directory contains minified versions of prettify.js, respond.js, and ZeroClipboard.js without source, along with a compiled Flash binary (ZeroClipboard.swf). While this exclusion correctly purges non-free blobs, it highlights that the "preferred form for modification" for the icons (the individual SVG files or FontForge project) is missing from the upstream distribution. As it stands, the source package only carries generated font binaries and a combined SVG font file. This finding aligns with the goals of bug #1135180. Although the Fork Awesome project is now archived and defunct, its SIL OFL-licensed SVG assets remain a valid source for the icons. A sustainable path forward would involve using a modern, Debian-native build toolchain—such as python3-fontforge or node-webfont—to generate the font binaries directly from these SVG sources during the package build. We can provide guidance on structuring a compliant source package and are happy to review any proposed changes to ensure they meet archive standards before your next upload. -rt on behalf of the DFSG team
