Is the Font Awesome icon package illegal to use without Pro?

Question

I am currently programming my website which I use with WordPress and OceanWP as a theme. Today I made research about the icons which OceanWP and thus thousands of users (commercial or not) use.

What unfortunately comes across to me quite contradicting is that on the website of the icon provider https://fontawesome.com/how-to-use/on-the-web/setup/hosting-font-awesome-yourself it is said that the CSS and JS files named:

"regular.css, light.css, regular.js and light.js" can only be used with Pro.

But if you download the free package at the beginning of the page, these files are included and the license says:

Font Awesome Free is free, open source, and GPL friendly. You can use it for
commercial projects, open source projects, or really almost whatever you want.
Full Font Awesome Free license: https://fontawesome.com/license/free.

# Icons: CC BY 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
In the Font Awesome Free download, the CC BY 4.0 license applies to all icons
packaged as SVG and JS file types.

# Fonts: SIL OFL 1.1 License (https://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
In the Font Awesome Free download, the SIL OFL license applies to all icons
packaged as web and desktop font files.

# Code: MIT License (https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
In the Font Awesome Free download, the MIT license applies to all non-font and
non-icon files.

And, if it were only allowed to use it under Pro, OceanWP, for example, would make itself punishable on their own website.

How can I solve the mystery of whether I can incorporate and use the orders as a whole commercial?

Toddy

Answer 1

I asked the same question on GitHub here are the importent parts of the answer:

This is not the first report about this section of the documentation. The fact is that some regular icons are part of the Free set, but the whole regular icon set isn't. FA5's Free regular icons are all FA4's outlined icons and some new useful additions

And

Feel free to use any icon you find in the downloaded free package for commercial purposes

You can read the whole answer: https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/17891#issuecomment-840013194

Toddy

Answer 2

The selected answer is correct, but it is not complete. The proper answer should actually be:

Feel free to use any icon you find in the downloaded free package for commercial purposes, ONLY IF YOUR NUMBER OF PAGEVIEWS/MONTH IS LESS THAN 10k

The reference: https://fontawesome.com/plans

Screen (as per 2022-01-28):

Rosewood

They seem to have updated their page to mention that this specifically when using Font Awesome Kits. I can't seem to access an archived version of the page so I can't confirm if the apparent link (underlined text as seen in your screenshot) would've conveyed the same information when clicked on. Screenshot 2022-02-23: i.sstatic.net/HQ4cH.png – Marrakech

Regardless, I am not a lawyer, but seeing as the licenses included in the Free package are CC-BY 4.0, SIL OFL 1.1 and MIT, you should have the legal right to use the material/icons under the terms of those licenses, without additional restrictions. AFAIK the rights that these licenses give you cannot be revoked for the current state of the material. – Marrakech