font license ? gui legal issues ?

[Wishx]

Hi guys, i want to release a freeware vst plugin and i want to use arial font in the gui as a text field in flowstone. Is that ok ? are there any legal issues in using arial like that in the gui and realeasing the plugin? please enlighten me

[tester]

Isn't arial a standard windows font?

Some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial

Btw, you yare not embedding font file anywhere inside your project (i.e. you don't redistribute/sell the font itself)), you just use reference "link" to it.

[Wishx]

yes from windows, just using in as a text for knob labels ;seems i cant use it without license from monotype ? hmmm

[Tronic]

Font Licensing
As with many types of software, font files are usually licensed rather than sold. Font licenses vary from vendor to vendor, but most don't allow redistribution of the fonts, and this includes redistribution of reproductions of the font, such as bitmaps containing the rasterized character set. This is also true of the licenses covering fonts that Microsoft supplies with many applications and with Windows.
Be careful, therefore, to ensure that you have the required license rights to redistribute any font you include as a bitmap containing the rasterized character set in your application!

So you can use any fonts preistalled in your system or any free fonts from third party.

[tulamide]

So you can use any fonts preistalled in your system or any free fonts from third party.

Tronic already said so, but I want to do a strong emphasis. Font licenses come only into play, when one of the two possibilities occur:

1) You are working with fonts for your own use, but the font license states that the font must be licensed for it. That applies if you, for example buy some fonts from Adobe, etc. There are lots of font website offering free fonts as an alternative. Those can be used for personal use. But I prefer http://www.fontsquirrel.com/, because they only host fonts that are 100% free for commercial use, too. So, you could, for example, write a pdf using one of that fonts and sell it without issues.

2) You, for whatever reason, have to bundle a font with your product. Example: You wrote an application that uses a special font that's loaded directly from a file rather than accessing system installed fonts. Or you draw an image that contains text written with a font.

If you only reference to a list of system installed files (which is what happens in Flowstone), you don't have to worry about licensing. Only if you'd then send your vst out with the font file appended, you'd need a license.

[Wishx]

aha! I see , thankyou for the info! Its always good to know about these things before you do a anything,