Font machine, legal issues.
Monkey Forums/Monkey Beginners/Font machine, legal issues.
| ||
| I am considering to buy jungle ide, and I downloaded and tested the demo of font machine(that comes with jungle ide http://www.blide.org/fontmachine/fontmachine-demo.rar). I liked very much the font machine, but I am worried with a key issue. I need the fonts to do a private app to sell, but the fonts in FontMachine seems to be from microsoft, like Arial and Times New Roman. Do you guys have any idea how to solve this issue? Or if I buy the the jungle ide will I have all rights to do it? tys I've posted this and had no answer here: http://www.jungleide.com/?topic=details-of-fontmachine |
| ||
| If it's anything like Angelfont/BMFont (the main alternative to FontMachine), it converts True Type fonts into bitmapped fonts. So you can generate a font off any TT font you are entitled to use. The MS fonts are included as examples. |
| ||
| Fontmachine generates a bitmap of some characters and use this to draw texts on games. The original fonts are not included in the export, so there's no fonts redistribution. |
| ||
| So do not need to pay microsoft microsoft for the license right? and I can do anything that i want to those fonts. thanks! |
| ||
| I'm not sure it's technically 100% legal to freely use (say) bitmapped Arial fonts in every possible size. In principle, if you had them in every size it would be almost the same as reproducing the fonts themselves! In practice, MS isn't going to come after you for this. Maybe if you had the #1 game on Android that was a text adventure sticking Arial font in everyone's face, they might ask you to acknowledge it! Anyway you can convert free fonts or fonts you licensed if you want to stick to absolute principles. |
| ||
| additionaly, you can always use cc or permisive licensed orifinal fonts to be 100% certain everything's ok |
| ||
| Personally I think this is a non-issue, its not something you need to worry about, the font your using is a bitmap image, the font you used to create that image is and was being used for its original purpose, MS made those fonts so people could write reports, and create things with them, while they may have something to say if you redistribute them I highly doubt they will have anything to say at all about an art asset created with/from them. |
| ||
| Why dont you ask to Microsoft society ? |
| ||
| I think you should read this. It basically comes down to whats in the EULA of either the operating systems EULA for pre-installed fonts or the fonts EULA when you install them. The best way to solve any licensing issues is to create you own fonts. There are a number of programs that can be used. You will find a list here and another here. |
| ||
| If you're concerned, this site has links to a bunch of fonts, some of which have permissive licences, http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/08/40-excellent-freefonts-for-professional-design/ It's six years old, so there are probably plenty more out there. But as legal risks go, using bitmapped versions of MS core fonts in games or apps seems like one of the smaller ones! I always feel that a lot of people on the internet are heavily invested in trying to make everyone paranoid about copyright law in order to further attacks on it. You probably micro-infringe all sorts of laws every day of the week! |
| ||
| If you want to be sure that you are covered from a legal perspective you should buy the font, but you need to check that the license that you buy lets you use it for app/games. I have to disagree with the former posters stating that that because the font is not distributed, but instead a rasterized version of it, would make it ok is simply not correct. If you do a "copy" of the font without adding any significant change to it would be a copyright issue. BUT I do not know exactly how you can use fonts that come with MS, but I would believe that there is something in the EULA stating something...legally...about it like someone else mentioned. I have myself been wondering about this as well, but I would make sure that any font that I would use in a commercial game is paid for and that the licence allows me to use it. I also believe that most contracts for fonts mention that the font it self is not allowed to be distributed in its raw form in your product, which might have been what previous posters meant. Sorry. Don't want this to become a super legal term discussion. |
| ||
| @chimaera: Don't worry, you can always go to dafont.com or other free font repository sites where you can download free fonts that are compatible with commercial use. |
| ||
| Ziggy, I totally agree. As long as the license states this, it is of course fine. |
   |