(PR excerpt) — In a move to fill the last remaining gap in font display capabilities for open source software, the GNOME Foundation has reached an agreement with Bitstream to release fonts under an open source license.

A total of 10 serif, sans serif, and monospaced fonts will be released under a special open source license, after they have been adapted to meet the requirements for technical use. The set of 10 fonts will bring advanced font capabilities to all developers and users of free and open source software.

“The donation of these fonts to the free software community is the final piece that will give full functionality to projects like Freetype, XFT2 and X Render extensions in the Xfree86 project, Pango, KDE and Trolltech's QT Rendering,” said Jim Gettys, GNOME Foundation board member.

“These fonts will be available to all developers and users, giving GNOME and other open source programs a great look right out of the box that has been lacking until now.”

The Bitstream Vera fonts will be available for free copying and redistribution and can be modified as long as the font name is changed. The fonts cannot be packaged by themselves for sale, but can be sold with any software. The GNOME Foundation will incorporate the fonts into future GNOME releases, giving end-users of all levels, as well as GNOME developers, the advanced display capabilities they offer.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.