Font Licence

[awiernie]

From the licence conditions of vairous font providers (Microsoft, Google, Monotype, Linotype) it is not clear to me, which fonts are allowed to use in the embedded project freely, which need licencing and which are not allowed to use in embedded devices at all.

Currently I use GNU "Free Sans", this is fully free and includes all characters you could need. It is however a bit different from our "Avenir", from which the licence conditions are not clear yet and our licenced version lacks also the subscripts glyphs (the paneuropean version however would have it). Our webpage uses

apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"

Segoe UI is from Microsoft and is be provided with Windows. It is allowed to create, display and print content as permitted by the licence terms of the product where it was included or you may download it temporarily to a printer or other output device. Any other use is prohibited. So it maybe may not be used with TouchGFX?

Roboto is from Google and is used with Android. It would be free (Apache Licence), but it lacks the supscript glyphs which I need in order to Display O₂ (O2, oxygen) correctly. Touchgfx cannot use missing characters from another font.

Clear Sans is similar to Free Sans and Arial and could also be used (Intel, Apache Licence), but is different looking from Avenir, Segoe UI and Roboto.

What do you use/think? If touchgfx could use another font for undefined characters, there would be many alternatives.

[Andrew Neil]

The licensing terms are entirely down to the font licensor - so you would need to contact them for any clarifications.

[Osman SOYKURT]

Hello awiernie,

TouchGFX Designer doesn't provide fonts but uses the fonts installed on your machine. For instance, Verdana or Segoe UI by Microsoft are already installed on your computer and that's why they're suggested on TouchGFX Designer. BUT, as @Andrew Neil​  said, you need to have the font license given by the font licensor itself if you want to distribute your application (because it will then include the font).

Google provides multiple fonts free to use, it's a good alternative to all licensed fonts you have installed on your machine by default.

/Osman

[awiernie]

I will ask more direct:

Does anyone use the Font Microsoft Segoe UI for the embedded device? If yes, do you just use it without thinking about the licence, or you have interpreted the licence in that way that it is allowed, or have anybody already clarified this with Microsoft?

[Osman SOYKURT]

I'll reply for TouchGFX, No, we don't.

/Osman

[Andrew Neil]

@Osman SOYKURT​ "No, we don't"

You don't what?

• You don't use the Font Microsoft Segoe?
• You don't think about licensing - just use it?
• etc ... ?

[awiernie]

The microsoft font-faq says:

...as Segoe UI is both our user interface and corporate branding font, it is not available for use outside of Microsoft products on non-Windows platforms. However, we do have a Segoe-compatible open-source font you can use: Selawik

Selawik however has not so many glyphs (e.g. no subscript numbers)