: Are there fonts whose licence allows me to edit them and then resell the edited version? I am looking for a way to start from a base font and create another font from it, that I could eventually

@Ogunnowo857

I am looking for a way to start from a base font and create another font from it, that I could eventually resell. The edits would be rather heavy but the shape could remain.


Use historic, i.e. printed typefaces, which are old enough to have an expired copyright. There are no (or hardly any) digital fonts you can edit and then resell. This is obviously not legal with commercial fonts, but even the already mentioned open source fonts won’t work, because their licenses only allow a redistribution with the same (i.e. non-commercial) license.

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@Angela777

Yes, these types of font are called Open/Libre fonts (not to be confused with OpenType font file format).

The principles are the same as Free Software/Open Source Software.

Some of these fonts are distributed in many popular Linux distros, e.g.:


Liberation licensed under SIL Open Font Licence
Droid and Roboto licensed under Apache License (these are Android's default font)
Ubuntu Font licensed under Ubuntu Font License (used in Ubuntu Linux)
A list of Libre/Open fonts in Open Font Library
The fonts in Google Fonts Library are free, open source fonts


Note that many of these fonts are copyleft, you are required to license your modifications under the same or a compatible terms to your font users and you need to make the font available in editable form. Most Libre licenses do guarantee you the freedom to sell a Libre product in modified or unmodified form. Though the requirement to make the editable form available means that people don't necessarily have to pay you to use your font.

If that is a concern to you, you might want to look for a non-copyleft open licensed font (i.e. permissive licensed, like MIT licensed fonts). Permissive licenses usually do not require releasing in editable form, some may require attribution.

Some open license may also require you to rename the fonts if you plan to distribute your modified font, for trademark reasons.

You should read and understand the licenses of the fonts that you are going to use before you use them.

Note that at present, there are no true public domain digital fonts that entered public domain through copyright expiry, because digital computers with general purpose typesetting capability have only existed for lesser period than the copyright expiry time in most jurisdictions.

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