Most freeware fonts travel on a readme paragraph, a dead link, or no stated terms at all, and the questions that follow (can a business use this, can anyone fix its broken character map, may an archive pass it on) have no written answer. These two licenses exist to be that answer: one page each, in plain language, free for any designer to adopt by citing the address. font.io publishes the texts and keeps them at stable addresses; font.io is not a party to any license granted under them.
Free for personal projects, crafts, and community materials given away. Logos, business use, advertising, and anything that earns money need the author's written permission first. Repairs, added characters, and embedding fixes are expressly allowed, so legacy fonts can be kept working.
Read the license
Free for personal and commercial work alike: branding, products, client work, embedding, no permission and no fee. Modification is allowed under rename-and-mark rules. The font itself may never be sold, which keeps the gift a gift.
Read the licenseChoose the Personal Use license if you want a say in commercial use: businesses come to you, and the font still spreads freely everywhere else. Choose the Commercial Use license if the font is a gift to everyone, businesses included, and your only conditions are that the font itself is never sold and that changed versions say what they are. Both licenses allow format conversion, repair of broken files, and free redistribution of the original package by archives and websites, because that is how freeware has always traveled.
To adopt either one, put its citation line in your font's readme and keep the license text with the font. The exact lines are on each license page. Background reading: how font licensing works.
Both licenses also expressly allow correcting embedding bits that contradict the license a font ships under. When a font needs that fix, the Font Embedding Fixer makes the change in your browser; the font never uploads anywhere.