Legality of packaging Windows icons in your own apps

Question

I would like to ship an application that uses images based on icons found in Shell32.dll (e.g. picture of a hard disk, folder, text file, etc).

I don't want to load the images from the common DLL at runtime because the images or their indices may change across various versions of Windows. I just want to repackage them in my application as resources, so my application stays consistent, and roughly in line with the look and feel of the OS.

So my question is, would it be a violation of any kind of license to include these standard images as resources in my (commercial) application?

Answer 1

If you didn't make them and you do not have a free use or pay license associated with them then you should not use them.

Answer 2

I'm sure that Microsoft has the copyright on those icons. But I'm also sure that they didn't document usage terms for the icons. Also I'm sure that nobody really cares - but don't take my word for it - there are always people who are just looking for trouble (especially competitors).

If you want to be 100% sure to be free of licensing and copyright problems, you can use a free/open icon set like the Tango Icon Set which is in use by many applications by now and has easy styling guidelines which allow for easy creation of additional icons.

I use Tango icons both in open source and commercial projects, and got lots of positive feedback so far as they integrate nicely with most modern OS GUIs.

Answer 3

Unfortunately it seems it is illegal to use their icons in "advertising, in books and other printed matter, on clothing or other promotional items, in online and Internet locations, in software applications, in television programs, in commercials, in movies, or on videotape"1

I'd suggest finding icons online that don't have any restrictions on them or use a graphics program to create your own icons.

Answer 4

If you own Visual Studio (or some other similar Microsoft developer tool), Microsoft does provide a license to redistribute their icons

In my Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 folder, there's a redist.txt file which includes, among other things, a notice that the images within the VS2008ImageLibrary.zip (in Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary) may be distributed subject to the license terms for Visual Studio. That image library contains most, if not all, of the standard Windows icons.