The FreeType 2 font engine is copyrighted work and cannot be used legally without a software license. In order to make this project usable to a vast majority of developers, we distribute it under two mutually exclusive open-source licenses.
This means that you must choose one of the two licenses described below, then obey all its terms and conditions when using FreeType 2 in any of your projects or products.
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The FreeType License, found in the file
docs/FTL.TXT, which is similar to the original BSD license with an advertising clause that forces you to explicitly cite the FreeType project in your product's documentation. All details are in the license file. This license is suited to products which don't use the GNU General Public License.Note that this license is compatible to the GNU General Public License version 3, but not version 2.
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The GNU General Public License version 2, found in
docs/GPLv2.TXT(any later version can be used also), for programs which already use the GPL. Note that the FTL is incompatible with GPLv2 due to its advertisement clause.
The contributed BDF and PCF drivers come with a license similar to
that of the X Window System. It is compatible to the above two
licenses (see files src/bdf/README and src/pcf/README). The same
holds for the source code files src/base/fthash.c and
include/freetype/internal/fthash.h; they wer part of the BDF driver
in earlier FreeType versions.
The gzip module uses the zlib license (see src/gzip/zlib.h) which
too is compatible to the above two licenses.
The MD5 checksum support (only used for debugging in development builds) is in the public domain.