Some more choice of icons to illustrate specific things on the wiki would help us illustrate things more appropriately. Looking into it, it looks like FontAwsome 4.7 is provided - this seems quite outdated, and the current version seems to come with almost four times more free icons. Could it be possible to update this ? Context: we have been chatting on IRC to try to find an appropriate icon to go with a new template. This template uses a conventional layout that includes an icon, as the other templates like it. We have not been able to find anything appropriate with what is currently available. In the updated set, several icons would fit the use case fine :). TIA -- ris.
*** Bug 908460 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Some more context for upgrade font awesome: The first point where the version is defined is at [1]. We would need to bump the version and make new release (maybe for multiple "majors" so all consumers can easily use newer version without too much hassle). This one should be mostly simple. After tagging and such, we would need to upload them to assets.g.o CDN. The second point would be for the wiki theme [2]. Here I'm more unsure of the correct flow, never tried it with that. [1] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/sites/tyrian-theme.git/ [2] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/sites/wiki/skin-tyrian.git/
So, it appears that Font Awesome switched from a fully open source project a "font a service" model circa 20018 when version 5 was released. For confirmation see https://fontawesome.com/plans where trivial use of some fonts is free but significant use is $100/yr and up. The current major release of Font Awesome is version 6. According to Font Awesome's Readme file, they've EOL'd the open source versions https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome. It looks like there is a community fork of the open source v4 font called Fork Awesome: * Website: https://forkaweso.me * GitHub: https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome * License: https://forkaweso.me/Fork-Awesome/license/ The fork has been around for a while and there is over 100 contributors. I suspect Fork Awesome is ultimately a better choice than continuing with Font Awesome.
(In reply to Jeff Gazso from comment #3) > So, it appears that Font Awesome switched from a fully open source project a > "font a service" model circa 20018 when version 5 was released. There is still a regularly released, "open license" product (MIT license, SIL OFL, and CC B), called "Font Awesome Free". It seems to be managed by a company, I gather that they decide what icons go in (and charge to create some of them), so maybe in that sense it's not a "fully open source project". The LICENSES.txt in the downloadable "Font Awesome Free" archive says: "Font Awesome Free is free, open source, and GPL friendly. You can use it for commercial projects, open source projects, or really almost whatever you want. Full Font Awesome Free license: https://fontawesome.com/license/free." (https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v6.4.0/fontawesome-free-6.4.0-web.zip) That said, according to https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/12199#issuecomment-362919956, the "build system" seems like it might not be released publicly. Fork Awesome states this as one of the reasons for its creation (in its main readme, https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome). So "open" licenses for distribution of the "Font Awesome Free" product sure, but I wonder how one would go about patching or forking it... idk. > confirmation see https://fontawesome.com/plans where trivial use of some > fonts is free but significant use is $100/yr and up. That "$100/yr and up" seems to cover extra icon-sets over "Font Awesome Free", a content delivery network service, and other subsidiary things, that are separate from "Font Awesome Free". "Font Awesome Free" retains the "free licenses", and is directly downloadable with no monetary charge. Btw, I'm just stating things as I understand them, this isn't any form of judgement about this model... > The current major release of Font Awesome is version 6. According to Font > Awesome's Readme file, they've EOL'd the open source versions > https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome. That page does say "version 3 and 4 are now end-of-life", but the most recent versions (5.x and 6.x) remain "open" (as in having MIT, SIL OFL, and CC B licenses), as mentioned above... So I don't think it could really be said that "they've EOL'd the open source versions", not technically at least. > It looks like there is a community fork of the open source v4 font called > Fork Awesome: > > * Website: https://forkaweso.me > * GitHub: https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome > * License: https://forkaweso.me/Fork-Awesome/license/ > > The fork has been around for a while and there is over 100 contributors. According to Fork Awesome's readme, it was created in February 2018, but then underwent a "period of extended inactivity (i.e. no release since February 2019)". It says that some users then got together to "try and revive the project", but there don't seem to have been any changes to the master branch in two years now... They do mention the "growing community of 128 contributors" on the homepage... I'm not sure this is much of a metric, but fwiw, most of those contributors have just one commit, with a load with 2, 3, or 4 commits, and three "heavier" contributors who each have more than a hundred commits (https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome/graphs/contributors). The principal committer has added little since 2016, the second committed almost exclusively during 2019. Even though Fork Awesome has added 121 icons over Font Awesome 4.7 (796 icons, up from 675), and as commendable as the project might be, I'm not sure it seems very "active", both over it's lifetime, and particularly over these past two years. Over the same period, "Font Awesome Free" has grown from 675 to 2,020 icons, more than doubling. > suspect Fork Awesome is ultimately a better choice than continuing with Font > Awesome. I guess "better" is subjective. "Font Awesome Free" has had a "revamp" of its icon's style, while Fork Awesome retains the "old" style. "Font Awesome Free" has had more regular releases over the years, and now has lots more icons. Fork Awesome is a "community based" project, they accept contributions on their github (in principle at least), and credit the contributors. "Font Awesome Free" additions seem to be decided by the company, who also offer an extended, paid, version, so... Both are released under "open source" licenses, though from the reference on Fork Awesome's website about the build system, it might be easier to patch or fork, idk. Fork Awesome 1.2 seems to be designed as a "drop-in" replacement for Font Awesome 4.7 (https://forkaweso.me/Fork-Awesome/whats-new/). "Font Awesome Free" 6.x doesn't seem "strictly 1:1 compatible" with Font Awesome 4.7, but it provides a "compatibility layer", which should make it just about a drop in replacement too (https://fontawesome.com/docs/web/setup/upgrade/upgrade-from-v4). "Font Awesome Free" has ebuilds in the m :), Fork Awesome doesn't. This is all much more than I thought I would have ever cared to learn about Font Awesome vs Fork Awesome xD, anyhow it's just my dump of the rabbit hole this just took me down. I should caveat all this as "just the way I'm reading things", I may be wrong, and the sources might not be always accurate. Note the heavy use of quotation marks, I'm skimming over a lot of things (this is much too long already), and I haven't contacted anyone for confirmation ;).
Oh dear, I don't know what I just hit on my keyboard, but I didn't intend to submit that previous comment yet :/. It's very verbose, and I hadn't got to probably the main point, I'll try to fix this quickly... First: >"Font Awesome Free" has ebuilds in the m :), Fork Awesome doesn't. Was supposed to read: "Font Awesome Free" has ebuilds in the _main Gentoo repo_ :) And now I'll just quickly reference what was probably going to be the most important thing. The most recent activity on Fork Awesome is this post: https://github.com/ForkAwesome/Fork-Awesome/blob/master/posts/2023-04-10_forkawesomeIntrospection/forkawesomeIntrospection.md Which is long, and a good read, but the main important thing from that is this: "I think the project is deprecated and should be put into legacy mode." So Fork Awesome, maybe not going far now... (In reply to Arthur Zamarin from comment #2) > Some more context for upgrade font awesome [...] Thanks for the insight on what is needed to upgrade :).
All that to say, it sounds like we're sticking with the O.G. Font Awesome, and will try to upgrade to the free v6.
