Font licence

[Emilito]

Hallo,

I have a question regarding fonts. I wanted to use the Arial font, but someone pointed it out that this font is property of Microsoft and that its use is restricted to the licence that everybody has within its PC. I never thought about it and now that the product that I am developing is going to be sold I am little bit confused about it.

Could anyone share their experiences regarding font use in embedded devices, and more specifically the use of Arial within a device that has not a Microsoft OS. Am I a little over the top or is it allowed to use any font without care and without having any problems?

I found this link about Arial licencing, but does does not say anything about using it in embedded devices. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/arial/licensing.html

Can I use all the fonts included in demos/modules/gdisp/fonts/?

Regards, Emilio

[Joel Bodenmann]

Hello @Emilito,

I appreciate that you ask this question. It's nice to see that there are still people that worry about this kind of thing.

It's definitely correct that you need to ensure that you're using a font in a way that you're not violating the font's licensing terms. That is always the case. All fonts come with a license. Some fonts are simply "public domain" licensed which means that you can do literally anything with the font. The DejaVu fonts that come with the µGFX library are public domain licensed which means that you can use them for sure without any further worries. The other fonts (namely the UI1 and UI2 fonts) were created by ourselves and the license allows you to use them in any µGFX application - so nothing to worry there either.

I haven't checked the license of the Arial font but it's very well possible that the license only permits usage within Microsoft products. There are fonts from other companies that also have these kinds of licensing terms.
Usually the best option you have is picking a font with an open license. You can find tons on sites such as dafont.com, fontsquirrel.com and similar (there are literally thousands of them).
There are also fonts that require you to purchase a commercial license but that are actually within the financial possibilities of a regular person or small company. I remember one particular font where you just had to pay 50 USD in order to use it commercial for any purpose within a company.
Other than that there are also open/free fonts that have been designed to be an alternative for an existing proprietary/commercial font. A specific example: Our UI-Designer created a design for a customer that used the Helvetica font. The license that would have allowed to use it in the required environment would have been too expensive for that project. The designer then simply looked for an alternative font that is very similar but free/open which we found and then used in the project.

I'm not aware of any font licenses or license terms that are specific to embedded devices. I assume that you're confusing the difference between "embedding a font" and "using a font on/in an embedded device". The former (embedding a font) refers to media formats that allow passing a font together with the media content itself. For example, you can embedd a font in a PDF file so that the received/user/viewer of the PDF file gets the correct font without actually having that font on his system.

Maybe @thoeby (our graphics & UI-designer) can add some more information to this as he's working with fonts every day.

[Emilito]

Hallo @Joel Bodenmann,

Thanks for the quick answer... Now I am looking for a replacement font in https://fonts.google.com/ that looks similar to Arial. There most of them have Apache licence and there should be no problem.

When I refered to licence terms for embedded devices I meant if the font could be used(just the graphical art, because the ttf file propably will not be used) in embedded devices like a car control system, radio, etc... In this link it states different licences depending on the usage.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/arial/licensing.html

For example it says that for printed documents there is no restriction, but if you wanna use it in a server or in an Android app you have to pay for the use.

[Emilito]

Wow... just found this website and now I am quite confused.

https://www.reachtech.com/support/faq/licensing-arrangements-fonts/

It basically says that the protected matter is the font file itself (the ttf file) but when you render it into a specific image file, probably it also includes a c file, then you are allowed to use it however you want to. Any graphical designer around here that could contribute a little bit?

[thoeby]

From the designer perspective there are tons of alternatives to arial - like Nimbus Sans L or Deja Vu. 

I am not sure about the linked FAQ above...there are some usecases it might be like that and it could be okay. But in my opinion there are to many open questions. I mean you couldn't sell a book, any movie cover or print a flyer with arial on it. I can't give you a clear answer on that. I would definitly prefer a font who's license clearly allow you to use it.

We are talking about realy small differences on high res-displays. On embedded-devices a low pixeldensity they are even smaller. So if you are using a font like Joel said you are on the safe side and it doesn't realy effect your endproduct

[inmarket]

The link above contains generalisms. The license file that comes with the font is ALWAYS what you must pay attention to.

Generally font licenses are written that generating characters and chatacter strings have license restrictions but once generated and layed out you can look at the result without license restrictions.

In terms of embedded use, assume you are using the ttf file itself when reading the license even though you are using a file format derived from the ttf.