Font Awesome is permitted in the Plugin Repository
This took longer than we would have liked to say, but there were communication issues on multiple fronts.
You can use the Font Awesome font files and CSS in your code, per the current Font Awesome License:
- The Font Awesome font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License – http://scripts.sil.org/OFL.
- Font Awesome CSS, LESS, and SASS files are licensed under the MIT License – http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html.
- The Font Awesome pictograms are licensed under the CC BY 3.0 License – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Attribution is no longer required in Font Awesome 3.0, but much appreciated: Font Awesome by Dave Gandy – http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome.
As far as crediting is concerned, we feel attribution is always good. You should always put that in your source code, but your readme is optional. Credit links must be opt-in if they show on the front facing part of your site (this includes the login page), but that’s nothing new.
So with that said, we’re going through the plugins that had been closed for Font Awesome usage and opening them. If we missed yours, please email us at plugins at wordpress.org, with a link to the plugin (like https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/font-awesome/ which is open) and we’ll check right away.
Austin Passy 11:36 pm on May 1, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good to know. Used http://genericons.com/ in a recent plugin 😉
Stephen Cronin 11:39 pm on May 1, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Out of interest, how did you resolve the licensing issue? Do we now allow things that are not GPL if they are licensed with another open source license? Or are the above licenses compatible with the GPL (I though they weren’t but could be wrong)?
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:00 am on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
“The Font Awesome font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License ”
SIL is compatible with the GPL 🙂
The only one that is NOT is the pictograms, which are licensed as CC BY 3.0, however they’re not included in the font, so it’s okay.
Stephen Cronin 1:49 am on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Mika, that’s great – I hate when licensing gets in the way of cool stuff.
Anderton 6:44 am on November 30, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Actually there are some concerns that SIL 1.1 is not compatible with GPL. Check this thread (with answers from Free Software Foundation) https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/1124 🙂
Samuel Wood (Otto) 4:45 pm on April 11, 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Technically it is not compatible, however fonts are special cases. The SIL-OFL fulfills all the requirements we have for our standards, and it fits the four-freedoms. It cannot be combined into a GPL work, but it can be distributed with one as a separate entity. This means it fits in with the “mere aggregation” clause in the GPL, which is why we allow it.
PHP is a script language, it’s not really possible to combine a font with it in a way that it would be a true combined work. The font will always be separate somehow.
John Saddington 11:50 pm on May 1, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
neato!
@mercime 12:09 am on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Font-Awesome version 3.0 above is licensed SILOpen Font License so it’s cool.
But that plugin https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/font-awesome/ version 1.1 in repo still has Font-Awesome version 2.0 which is licensed CC BY 3.0 see https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/font-awesome/trunk/assets/css/font-awesome.css
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:00 am on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes, and Rachel’s fixing that. It’s a good-faith to allow it.
Chip Bennett 1:36 am on May 3, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Awesome to see consistency between the Theme and Plugin directories with respect to SIL OFL compatibility with GPL. I believe the decision-making process was handled very well, and the end result is both an example communication working well, and a huge win for developers and users.
And Kudos to FontAwesome to moving from CC-By to SIL OFL!
jr00ck 6:00 pm on May 9, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Ipstenu for working your magic on this. I’m happy that we got a good result after all our discussion. Still waiting on my plugin Font Awesome More (FontStrap) approval 😉
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/font-awesome-more/
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 7:11 pm on May 9, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I mentioned this to you way at the beginning of the email chain, so I get why you forgot. You have to resubmit. We rejected the plugin, so you have to start over with that process. We don’t have a way to un-reject.
dFactory 6:13 pm on May 10, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good news! We added it right away to our Widget Icon plugin: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-icon/
Umbrovskis.com 11:54 pm on August 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
funny, that my plugin “Font Awesome for WordPress ” was rejected, because of incompatible licence 🙁
So now I have to resubmit it? 🙂
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:33 pm on August 5, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes. At the time of your submission, we were still in the midst of sorting this out.
brasofilo 4:55 am on October 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Is there any problem if we enqueue everything from a CDN in our plugin?
E.g.
wp_enqueue_style( 'font-awesome', '//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/3.2.0/css/font-awesome.min.css' );Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:20 pm on October 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes there’s a problem. We don’t permit you to load from a CDN unless you’re providing a service. Calling to external sites for your plugin content is considered ‘phoning home’ and is 100% not permitted.
Load it locally.
brasofilo 10:02 pm on October 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Oh, of course, forgot the basic rule. ET must not call home 🙂