Comment 7 for bug 1607535

Brian, thanks for looking.

The real problem here is that downloading the font files from Sourceforge has sometimes worked, and sometimes not.

In true "Read the code, Luke" vein, the difference between versions 3.4 (Ubuntu) and 3.6 (Debian) is that in Ubuntu 3.4 the base path for the download URI (in the rules file) is:
URLROOT = http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/

but in Debian 3.6 the download URI (in the update-ms-fonts file) is:
URLROOTS="http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/
 http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://ufpr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://internode.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/
 http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/"

The download test that you suggested runs fine today, but would not have done so a few months ago. Others have suggested that this is due to how advertisements are/have been presented by Sourceforge.

In a nutshell, version 3.6 is apparently more robust against download problems than 3.4. Since 2014 there have been download problems reported, though today, 2016-10-07, such problems are not manifesting themselves. Running wget from the command line gets the interesting response:

<<stuff deleted>>
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://freefr.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe [following]
<<…and then the file is retrieved>>

One might assume that the freefr.dl.sourceforge.net URI indicates that the files are provided free from any interference. (I was unable to track down any specifics on this.)