Licensing of Arial and Arial Black included in the default font list

[nimitbhagat]

Hi GrapesJS team,

We are using GrapesJS as part of a web-based editor.

We noticed that Arial and Arial Black are available by default in the font list of the GrapesJS editor.

The fonts are not bundled, hosted, or distributed by our application. GrapesJS simply references them as CSS font-family values, and the browser/system loads the font when it is available.

Could you please confirm whether the inclusion of Arial and Arial Black in the default GrapesJS font list has any licensing implications from the GrapesJS side?

Specifically, since GrapesJS does not distribute the actual font files and only uses their CSS font-family names, can these fonts be used as-is in a commercial application?

Thanks!

[gyanu2507]

From GrapesJS’s side, that default list is just CSS font-family names. The project is not bundling or shipping Arial / Arial Black font files.

Whether your product can tell end users to render in Arial is mostly about the client environment: if the OS already has a licensed Arial installed, referencing the family name in CSS is normal. GrapesJS naming those families in its UI defaults does not by itself redistribute Monotype/Microsoft font binaries.

I am not a lawyer, and commercial font licensing can still matter if you embed, subset, or host the actual font files yourself. For “editor shows Arial in the dropdown, browser uses the system font if present,” GrapesJS is not adding a font-file redistribution step. If you need a clean libre default set, swap the editor font list to something like Inter / system-ui / Liberation Sans and avoid implying you ship Arial files.

[nimitbhagat]

From GrapesJS’s side, that default list is just CSS font-family names. The project is not bundling or shipping Arial / Arial Black font files.

Whether your product can tell end users to render in Arial is mostly about the client environment: if the OS already has a licensed Arial installed, referencing the family name in CSS is normal. GrapesJS naming those families in its UI defaults does not by itself redistribute Monotype/Microsoft font binaries.

I am not a lawyer, and commercial font licensing can still matter if you embed, subset, or host the actual font files yourself. For “editor shows Arial in the dropdown, browser uses the system font if present,” GrapesJS is not adding a font-file redistribution step. If you need a clean libre default set, swap the editor font list to something like Inter / system-ui / Liberation Sans and avoid implying you ship Arial files.

Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense.

Our use case is exactly the scenario you described — Arial and Arial Black are only present in the GrapesJS editor’s default font list as CSS font-family names. We are not bundling, hosting, embedding, or distributing the actual font files.

So, from the GrapesJS side, there should be no additional font-file redistribution or licensing concern. Any font licensing requirements would depend on the client environment and whether the actual font files are separately embedded or distributed by the product.

Thanks for confirming this.

[gyanu2507]

Glad that matches your setup. If you keep the defaults as name-only CSS families and never ship the font files, you are in the case I was describing.