Public font lists

Fedora acceptability
If you haven't done so yet, please read our legal page before proposing new fonts.

Several public lists of "free" fonts exist. They all have their pros and cons.

Open Font Library

The Open Font Library is a young project dedicated to the creation of free/libre-open fonts. Any currently unpackaged font listed there is probably fair game for packaging (but do check our legal page anyway). In addition new external free/libre-open font references are regularly posted on the Open Font Library mailing list.

Fonts listed there are have been screened for legal suitability, but not for artistic quality or internationalization.

SIL

SIL has demonstrated strong support for free/open fonts, drafting our preferred license, and releasing many quality fonts.

We should probably package every single OFL-ed SIL font on this page. New fonts may appear there every once in a while.

Fonts listed there are have been screened for artistic quality and internationalization, but their legal suitability varies. Also only Unicode fonts will work in Fedora.

Unifont

Unifont lists fonts critical for good internationalization. Most of the fonts listed there have a long history and would really help Fedora users of the corresponding locales. That also means a lot of them antedate recent work on free/libre licenses . For example it is common to forget about embedding.

However, the licensing information on Unifont is not always up to date, and careful advocacy by local teams is likely to result in Fedora-friendly relicensing.

Fonts listed there are have been screened for internationalization, but not for artistic quality or legal suitability.

Smashing magazine

Smashing magazine regularly posts lists of free/gratis fonts the editor approves the design of. A few of them are free/libre-open and thus could be packaged directly.

The bulk of the listed fonts is released by foundries or individual font designers under terms not suitable for Fedora. However those terms usually only reflect the common preoccupations of font designers. They were probably not intended to prevent Fedora-style redistribution. Careful advocacy may therefore convince some authors to relicense under laxer terms that still protect them while allowing Fedora packaging.

Fonts listed there are of high artistic quality, but have not been screened for legal or internationalization suitability.

Wazu Japan's Gallery of Unicode Fonts

Wazu Japan is not strictly speaking a free/open font directory, but many of the fonts listed there are perfectly acceptable for Fedora, and usually not listed anywhere else. Some of the URLs are stale but a little googling is usually sufficient to find the new font home.

Fonts listed there are have been screened for internationalization, but not for artistic quality or legal suitability.

Fontconfig

The fontconfig defaults list many notable fonts which are likely to encountered on Linux systems. Not all of them are free/open and suitable for Fedora inclusion, but most of them are, and we've not packaged them all yet.

Fonts listed there are have been screened for internationalization, but not for artistic quality or legal suitability.

Stephen G. Hartke's free font list

Stephen G. Hartke compiled a list of free font resources. It includes a bit of everything: actual free/libre/open fonts, not-libre fonts (not suitable for Fedora), fantastic and not-so-great fonts. Worth a stop anyway.

Debian fonts

Listed on the Debian weekly font review. Should be mostly ok, but re-checking the licensing never hurts.

Other lists

• FSF directory,
• Fonts section on SIL's external resources page,
• identifont's gratis fonts (some of them may be free/open too)
• fontscape's gratis fonts (some of them may be free/open too)
• freedesktop,
• japanese fonts

Fonts in Fedora
The Fonts SIG takes loving care of Fedora fonts. Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help will be appreciated.