What Is the SIL Open Font License? A Plain-English Guide
If you download free fonts, you'll see four letters again and again: OFL. It stands for the SIL Open Font License, and it's the license behind most of Google Fonts and the majority of quality free typefaces. Understanding it removes almost all the anxiety around "can I actually use this?"
What the OFL permits
The OFL is deliberately permissive. Under it you may:
- Use the font for any purpose, personal or commercial.
- Embed it in documents, apps, websites, logos, and products.
- Redistribute it, bundle it, and even modify it.
There is no fee, no attribution requirement in your final design, and no limit on commercial use. A logo you make with an OFL font is yours.
The three real rules
The freedom comes with three conditions, and they're easy to honor:
- Keep the license with the font. If you redistribute the font file itself, include the original OFL text and copyright notice.
- Don't sell the font on its own. You can sell products made with it; you can't sell the font file as the product.
- Respect Reserved Font Names. If you modify an OFL font, you must rename it so it isn't confused with the original.
Why it matters for a download site
The "keep the license with the font" rule is why every font in our library ships with its license file in the download. It's also why a site can host OFL fonts for free and run ads without legal risk: redistribution is expressly allowed. That's the entire legal foundation of free-font directories.
In short: if a font is OFL, you can almost certainly use it for whatever you have in mind. The only thing you can't do is pretend you made the font itself.