The recon-surf pipeline is largely based on FreeSurfer. 
A working version of FreeSurfer is therefore needed to run recon-surf.

We would like to note, that FreeSurfer is distributed under its own license: 

# Copyright © 2011-2016 The General Hospital Corporation (Boston, MA) "MGH"
#
# Terms and conditions for use, reproduction, distribution and contribution
# are found in the 'FreeSurfer Software License Agreement' contained
# in the file 'LICENSE' found in the FreeSurfer distribution, and here:
#
# https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/fswiki/FreeSurferSoftwareLicense
#
# Reporting: freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu

