Free for Commercial Use Font License, v1.0
A license born under the weird phenomenon of China's font designer community.
FCFL is a product from the unstable licensing environment in China. There exist multiple Chinese fonts that are free for personal/commercial use, but do not wish others to modify the fonts (i.e., not open source); most of them just label the font as "free for use for whole society" without further details. This type of releasing method is problamatic and cause the users to have licensing concerns including unclear permissive usage. For creators, this may also hidden risks arising from illegal use of fonts, causing the creators to bound the legal responsibility.
Thus, NFSL2001, with the help of Maoken.com, Keynote Researcher, and Tsanger.cn, together we draft, revise and publish this Free for Commercial Use Font License (FCFL), Version 1.0, which is here to provide a simple solution for all font designers/foundries to use, letting creators specify the range of usage through FCFL, ensuring the rights of users and creators.
Not an open source license!
This license is not an open-source font license. If you seek to contribute the open-source community or just want to let everyone modify the fonts freely, we strongly suggest you to use "SIL Open Font License" (SIL OFL) which is open source and allow further collaboration among font designers. As a safe guard, FCFL will also automatically be terminated and converted to SIL OFL when the author allow others to modify their FCFL fonts.
Licensed usage——
Allows: Free for personal and commercial use, embedding in webpages, embedding in programs, trademark registration, redistrubution of original font.
Deny: Editing and redistribution of modified fonts.
Special case: Conversion of original and modified fonts to SIL OFL when a modified version of original font is allowed by original author with written permission.
With the following features:
- FCFL is similar to CC BY-ND 4.0 in nature, with the exception of allowing derivatives under the condition of changing the origial font license to SIL OFL when doing so.
- Fonts licensed under FCFL is free for both personal and commercial use, but the copyright and ownership of the font belongs to the font author. As a safety feature, in the case where one obtains a clearly written authorization from the original author and releases a modified version of font, the original font author must re-license the original font license from FCFL to SIL OFL to avoid disputes; all modified version of fonts must be released under SIL OFL.
- The contents of FCFL is expressed in both English and Chinese, and both versions have the same legal effect. This ease the reading for Chinese creators to use this license, and simplify the complexity for Chinese users to explain the license legally while protecting the usage rights of global users.
- FCFL explicitly grants users a permanent, global, free, non-exclusive, and irrevocable font usage permission, and provides normative terms for the current unclear authorization issues in the Chinese font design community to protect the rights of users and font designers.