STOP using current language icon and switch to font awesome 5 version

[david-a-wheeler]

I like the look of the "language icon" as shown here: http://www.languageicon.org/ - it's what we are using now.

However, I thought the "language icon" was under an open source software license. It was embedded in font awesome 4, and at first glance it looked like it was under CC licensing in Wikimedia. However, it looks like things are more murky. In particular, its originators seem to be claiming that its license is a weird custom license, as documented on their website. They say it's "Semi-Noncommercial", which seems like a misleading code word for "noncommercial".

I think the "language icon" people are trying to have it both ways: They want worldwide standardization of an icon, but they also want to control the same icon (e.g., to have exclusive rights over what can be done with the icon). I think that's absurd. Either control the mark (like a trademark), or try to make it a standard. Pick one and only one.

I don't think we have a legal problem, but in general we try to stick with OSS licenses. I want to avoid any appearance of hypocrisy. Font awesome (free) uses SIL as its license, and that is unambiguously a non-problem (both the FSF and Debian accept as a Free license). We're using glyphicons because they're embedded in Bootstrap, making them hard to completely avoid. But we're migrating away from glyphicons, and I expect glyphicons to disappear from BadgeApp when we upgrade Bootstrap. In short, font awesome is fine, and we have a migration plan away from glyphicons... which means adding a problematic icon looks like a bad idea.

The obvious solution is to switch to the font awesome 5 symbol here:

For a little more info, see language in Font Awesome 5.

While I like the one we're currently using better, that's probably from familiarity, and I think the font awesome version is fine.

[dankohn]

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. It would be nice to email the language icon folks to let them know a somewhat influential site is abandoning them because of their license choice.

[david-a-wheeler]

Thanks. This was an unexpected surprise to me. I note that font awesome has dropped the old language icon and replaced it with a completely different one... I suspect that their claimed license is the primary reason.

[david-a-wheeler]

I tried to find a way to leave a comment to the language icon folks. However, there's no obvious way to do so, and I'm not interested in becoming a detective.

[david-a-wheeler]

An interesting approach might be:

https://github.com/jamesmartin/inline_svg/blob/master/README.md

Depending on what it expands to.

[david-a-wheeler]

There are other options:

• Another option is the material "language" icon (looks like a globe), here: https://material.io/resources/icons/?style=baseline
• LibreTranslate has an icon, I don't know if it's specific to them.

I'm currently leaning to the Font Awesome 5 icon, it's especially clear that language is involved. The icon used by LibreTranslate is nice, but that may be their logo instead of a generally-useful icon.

[david-a-wheeler]

Another option: the material design translate icon might be a much better icon than language, since it expressly shows multiple languages