Policy for Handling Flags in Fedora
Specific Flags
When a package contains flag images that are used (in the user interface, in documentation, etc.) to represent locations, countries, nations, other kinds of geopolitical entities, languages, other kinds of ethnocultural concepts, religions, political movements and institutions, and the like, and where such use is not technically or substantively essential to the package, those flag images must be placed in an -flags subpackage. The -flags subpackage cannot be Required by the main package.
If the flag images can not be split out of the package, they must either be replaced with non-specific images, or removed altogether.
Generic Flags
Flag images which are not specific to any location, country, nation, geopolitical entity, language, ethnocultural concept, religion, political movement, or institutions are permitted in Fedora packages, assuming such use complies with other Fedora guidelines and policies.
Exceptions
Any packager who feels that they should be granted an exception to this policy should escalate the issue to FESCo for review.
Specific Test Cases
- Deluge's use of country flags to indicate the location of bittorrent peers:
Here flags are used to represent locations, and they are clearly not essential to the package; they are just a kind of user interface design choice. The Fedora maintainer would have to remove the flags or move them to a -flags subpackage.
- Use of the UN flag, Mississippi flag, LGBT flag, Hezbollah flag, Confederate flag, Jain flag, Nazi flag, Tibet flag, Esperanto flag
All of these flags must be treated in the same way as conventional country flags.
- Non-flag policitical symbols, such as the Lebansese cedar and the Tajikistani crown
These symbols fall outside the scope of this policy
- Flags used for educational purposes, such as a education program that teaches children about countries or history using flags
In this specific case, the flag usage would be acceptable. Instances like this must be examined on a case-by-case basis by FESCo, but they will often be acceptable because they are substantively essential to the core function of the package.
- Flags used for gaming purposes, such as a game that uses flags to represent country/language selection
In this specific case, the flag usage is not acceptable. The flag use here is almost certainly not essential.
- Fonts that include the glyphs for Unicode emoji, including representations of country flags
These are acceptable because the glyphs are technically or substantively essential to the font.