added license and author

[tantalor]

No description provided.

[davegandy]

Good call. I'll see what I can do.

[puzrin]

It's better to licence font files under SIL OFL. It's like CC, but specially for the fonts. See iconic's readme (the end) for example: https://github.com/somerandomdude/Iconic#readme .

PS. rename README -> README.md for markdown markup.

[davegandy]

Thanks a ton for the help. I'll look at the license and decide. This is VERY helpful, as I've never licensed anything before. :)

[davegandy]

What are the advantages of using SIL OFL compared to CC BY? Do my updates to the license in the README.md make things clearer to my intentions? At some point, I want to offer a paid version that includes a desktop TTF and all of the icon vectors.

[puzrin]

1. SIL OFL has a bit more font-specific details, that author info can added not as text, but bundled into binaries metadata, and that original font name can not be used in derived works without special permission.
   • In general - there are no principal differences between SIL OFL and CC BY.
   • SIL OFL is more common and recognizeable for fonts.
2. I don't understand, what's the difference between free open source and payed version. If someone convert font format or extract SVG, that will not violate licence.

[davegandy]

@puzrin Thanks for the info on SIL OFL. I might switch things over to that.

As for point #2, the commercial version would include:

1. Packaged TTF that works on desktop. Character mappings would not be in Unicode PUA, but as standard keyboard characters. Right now it would be a pain in the butt to try to use the font as is after conversion.
2. Vectors of all icons included as PDF.
3. License to use commercially without attribution of any kind required.

Thoughts?

[puzrin]

IMHO making mapping variations is a bad idea, and can cause confusions in perspective. It's better to follow unicode standard, where possible. Here i did memo fo myself https://github.com/nodeca/fontomas/wiki , where to search symbol codes & descriptions.

This 2 steps can simplify symbols use:

• add html demo, like here https://github.com/somerandomdude/Iconic/tree/master/font/Iconic%20Fill , with HEX codes. One can use codes directly, or copy-paste chars.
• follow unicode standard, and user will see similar symbol from native font, when your one is not installed. Such "smart fallback" is convenient.

[pmario]

Thoughts?

Hi Dave,
Nice work. I've to say I'm not a lawyer, so the following text contains my personal opinion, that may be wrong.

Software

At the moment the whole stuff is open and free to use for everyone as your "readme license link" [2] shows. If I take it and sell it, that's no problem, as long as I mention somewhere, that you did it.

If I would want to sell some stuff, I would go for a CC-nc-by-sa type license. CreativeCommons have a nice license builder [1], with which you can play, and see what happens.

On the other hand a CC-nc-by-sa license, limits a software "usefullness" for others, because it is very strict and it can't be sold by 3rd parties. But it makes sure, that if someone alters your content, they have to publish it in the same way you did. see the "-sa- share alike" part.

If you go for a CC-by-sa license [3] others are free to use and sell it, but if they change it and redistribute it, it needs to be CC-by-sa too. So everyone (eg: you) can take it, use it and sell it too. This type was used at the "Iconics project" [4] that was mentioned by "puzrin".

Fonts

For fonts I'd go for a SIL OFL [5] type license, which imo is the only usefull license for web-fonts. But it's free to use. So you won't get money for it. I've seen fonts, that have a "limited free" and a "full pro" version. The limited web version only contains an eg: "normal" font style optimized for screens. The pro contains "normal, bold, italics, and may be more glyphs" for web use and also optimized for printed media use. The pro has to be paid.

For your icons, imo this is a bit more complicated. I only could think of a "free web version" that contains eg: 150 icons. And a pro version contains eg: "400" icons. ...
But what to do with icons that come from the community. Probably they should be free.

just my 2 cents.

[1] https://creativecommons.org/choose/
[2] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
[3] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[4] https://github.com/somerandomdude/Iconic
[5] http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL

[puzrin]

Yes. It's difficult to give one thing free as open source in one place and sell the same in another. Usually, open source promotes brand/company/person, and business is done on additional/affiliated services (extended icon packs, site designs, support and so on).

Also, be very careful about non-commercial restriction in licences. It seems, that it can help you to gain some money, but in practice it can prevent distribution. Just because the most web projects are "commercial". So, you can gain in short-term, but loose in long-term.

[davegandy]

@pmario @puzrin Thanks to you both especially for your thoughts on license strategy. I'm trying to decide the best way forward, and should have things sorted soon. This has been an awesome learning opportunity for me, especially in open source licenses, and really shows the power of the community. This project is now up to almost 10% of the number of followers Bootstrap itself has, which is pretty amazing to me.

So thanks again.

[pmario]

It a really cool project. Thanks for creating it.

[yagee-de]

I want to use Font-Awesome in a GPL licensed work. Sadly CC-BY 3.0 seems to be incompatible with my GPL project. I kindly ask you to dual license it under CC-BY 3.0 and GPLv3.

[davegandy]

@puzrin @pmario

v3.0, which is coming out this month, will include a new license to make things fully open source. The font will be an Open-SIL license. Any suggestions on what license to use for the FA code itself? I'd like to keep things as unrestricted as possible. Have any good links for reading?

[puzrin]

• SIL for font
• CC BY (or CC BY-SA, depending on your plans) for pictograms
• MIT for code (not GPL)

It would be nice to clarify licence for separate pictograms, if someone wish to extract. Or to include those right in this repo.

[davegandy]

I've changed my plans an don't intend to make any money off the project. Does it make sense to have it be LGPL compatible? I'm not even sure what that means.

Why MIT for code over GPL?

[puzrin]

in general, GPL means, that if one use this code, his code must became GPL too. That can be not acceptable for closed-souce (commercial) projects. MIT means, that one just have to mention author.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/805387/what-do-licenses-mean-gpl-mit-cc-etc

~ the same difference for CC BY and CC BY-SA - "Share Alike" adds some requirements for derivative work. [SA] and GPL are virus-like - that's ass pain to commercial projects :)

[pmario]

v3.0, which is coming out this month

congratulation!

---

I've to say I'm not a lawyer, so the following text contains my personal opinion and preferences.

I'd like to keep things as unrestricted as possible. Have any good links for reading?

imo MIT [1] is the most open license

...snip
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
...snip

So if I use it for my project, I do have the right to do everything with it. I can use my own proprietary license to sell it.

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

• With the shall in the above paragraph imo I don't even need to mention you as an author. Which imo would be "bad style" but possible.
• The possibility to sublicense in the first paragraph makes it possible for me to modify the stuff and use a different license for my licensees

---

• BSD [5] offers a little, little... bit more control than MIT. The "3 clause" [3] version does not allow anyone to use your name for promotion of there product without your permission.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

• The BSD "2 clause" [2] version just skips the 3rd clause.
• The above paragraphs contain a must in the conditions.
• BSD does not contain the sublicense clause, so everyone who uses / changes the stuff, is a licensee to the original license. So imo the must is important there.

Interesting to read:
"Why you should use a BSD style license for your Open Source Project" [6]
Wikipedia MIT [4], BSD [5] (I'm sure you know these allready)

---

IMO using the CreativeCommons types is a good joice, if you want to start very strict and make them more and more flexible from time to time. Where all the licenses are still compatible

eg (links: see my first post):

• CC BY-SA-NC .. must mention the author, share alike, non commercial ... very strict
• CC BY-SA .. must mention the author, share alike, ... very strict
• CC BY ... must mention the author, open

imo CC-BY and BSD offer allmost the same possibilities.
CC-BY-SA and GPL are similar and very restrictive. Which for me is OK if I want to have it that way :)

have fun!
Mario

[1] http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html
[2] http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
[3] http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

[6] http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/article.html

[davegandy]

@puzrin @pmario Any thoughts on the Apache 2.0 license? This page seems to like it better than the MIT license.

[puzrin]

Apache and MIT are similar. MIT is just shorter and less formal. Most node.js projects uses MIT.

[pmario]

I don't know the Apache 2.0 license. Way to much to read for an open license ;)

---

Do you intend to open source the font source code too? In this case I'd use a GPL license for just that.

[davegandy]

I'm pretty happy with the new license in 3.0. Let me know if you think any improvements should be made.

[pmario]

Awesome ! :)