History
Iconify was created as an experiment in 2016. Goal was to create a replacement for icon fonts that would offer a large selection of icons, but without embedding all those icons.
In 2018, I created proof of concept for SVG framework, later renamed project from SimpleSVG to Iconify.
In 2020, a part-time experiment turned into a proper full time project and all real development work started.
For more detailed history, check out Iconify history page.
Iconify purpose
The purpose of Iconify project is to give developers freedom to choose icons.
Vendor lock-in
When you use one icon set or icon font, you are vendor locked-in. It is usually very hard to switch to other icons or add your own icons.
Vendor lock-in and lack of choice are even bigger concerns if you are working with advanced customisable software, such as blogs or forums. By choosing one icon set, software authors not only lock-in themselves, but also all designers that want to customise that software. Plugins designed for such software use whatever icon set is supplied in software. Themes designed for such software are expected to work with third party plugins, making it very hard or even impossible to change icons, making all themes look the same.
Iconify solves that by:
- Offering a huge choice of icon sets and icons.
- Making it easy to add custom icons or icon sets. Tools used for importing and processing icons are open source.
- Making icon data easily available, so you can use it with your own tools and icon components.
Open source
Iconify is open source.
However, currently some parts of the project are not yet open-sourced. The plan is to fix it by the end of 2022 by cleaning up all old spaghetti code and publishing everything to public repositories.
Monetising
Iconify is not monetised.
Originally, the plan was to eventually offer premium icon sets that would pay for servers and development. In mid 2022 that plan changed, thanks to people showing interest in sponsoring open source development. The new plan is to open source everything and rely on sponsors to finance development. Current, sponsorship level is nowhere near enough, but every bit helps and gives hope for the future of the project.
If you are using Iconify in your projects, please consider sponsoring Iconify development.
