The URL listed in the package, http://www.thessalonica.org.ru/en/fonts.html, no longer points to information about the font. It redirects to some cryptocurrency page. I tried to google it, and couldn't find any obvious replacement. The font is listed in various font collections, but nothing about this font in particular. Maybe the URL should simply be removed from the package.
That's unfortunate. Ideally, if upstream is no longer inactive, the font should be retired from Fedora. I'll leave it be for the time being and remove it in the next release maybe.
However, I don't think we have a replacement font for old slavic :(
Ah---I'm happy to keep it around as long as it works, Nicolas. I don't think I can remove the URL, though. Maybe I could use our wiki url and make a note in the spec? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Old_Standard_fonts
I think the best practice when upstream vanishes is to transform the URL in the spec into a comment ("originally downloaded from xxxx) Sometimes upstream just moved, and Google finds its new home. And sometimes it does not exist anymore:( That's the problem with one-man "designer" projects. Though in that particular case, it seems to exist within oflb https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/old-standard and google fonts https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Old+Standard+TT so the most recent of them could be used as new upstream
> I don't think I can remove the URL, though. Is there anything in any guidelines REQUIRING a URL in every package? Rpmbuild itself doesn't require it from what I know. Is there anything in the Fedora rules that does? Now, it might anyway be a good idea to use a link to a font collection as suggested in comment 4. And if there wasn't any reasonable URL at all, it might be a good idea to make it a comment as also suggested. But is there really anything that would have prevented you from removing it altogether?
URL is not mandatory. Some very old components in Linux systems antedate the web, and were published on long dead (not http) forums. The corresponding archive in Fedora dist-git has no URL. (I was the maintainer of such a package in Fedora before relinquishing it. IIRC the package has since been dropped, but its makes you realise Fedora can carry things long after their upstream has vanished as long as the result works and someone is ready to look at problems). Another example in the distro is PT Sans. It was commissioned (paid for) by the Russian Federation, so for a little stretch of time the foundry was motivated to be nice to the general public, and they published a version with correct OFL metadata on a web forum when the public asked. Unfortunately, they didn't fix the version on their main web site, which carries the usual freeware (not freedomware) licensing info. Now that the web forum has been EOL-ed, and public money has dried up, there is no upstream URL to download OFL PT Sans from anymore.
FEDORA-2019-1fa2b46eb1 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 30. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-1fa2b46eb1
FEDORA-2019-06ed61dc40 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 29. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-06ed61dc40
oldstandard-sfd-fonts-2.0.2-26.fc29 has been pushed to the Fedora 29 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for instructions on how to install test updates. You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-06ed61dc40
oldstandard-sfd-fonts-2.0.2-26.fc30 has been pushed to the Fedora 30 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for instructions on how to install test updates. You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-1fa2b46eb1
oldstandard-sfd-fonts-2.0.2-26.fc30 has been pushed to the Fedora 30 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
oldstandard-sfd-fonts-2.0.2-26.fc29 has been pushed to the Fedora 29 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.