4 ms·

You'd prefer Google throw them under a proprietary license instead of asking nicely?

eurasiantiger 6y ago
I don’t care since the icon font approach is technically inferior to SVG icons: it’s monochrome only, whereas SVG supports colors and transparency. Icon fonts also suffer from a plethora of rendering issues across platforms because fonts are usually rendered with speedy display of long text in mind. It’s strange Google would invest in a years-old kludge tech.
- jfoster 6y ago
  Well, it's a good thing it's under Apache 2.0, then. Maybe someone will convert/trace them as SVGs and sublicense them...
  - scoot 6y ago
    They're available as SVGs. They link to the GitHub repo at the top of the page, and if you select any icon, there's a download SVG button.
- mappu 6y ago
  Fonts can actually contain coloured glyphs now, originally for emoji. Although it does seem like a layering violation.
  - eurasiantiger 6y ago
    Good luck recoloring them in CSS :/
ilogik 6y ago
y...yes? they should use an appropriate license
- jfoster 6y ago
  It's incredible that one of the biggest companies in the world can't manage to appropriately license their stuff. Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. I imagine they could've chosen it for license simplicity & compatibility reasons, but again, if they just wanted these to be used as widely as possible, they could've just gone CC0.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. Fonts are code. And very often have a clear source vs. object form.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  All Google is saying is don't scam others by reselling the same stuff that is freely available. Licensing it under something more restrictive (or custom) would make this a non-starter for other companies to reuse or remix.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Not every undesirable behavior can be blocked by firm rules without catching non-problematic behavior. Using a license which that errs on the side of being permissive rather than restrictive at the boundary and using social pressure to try to mitigate undesirable behavior in that boundary area seems a reasonable approach. (True for law, too, and lots of other domains.) There's some domains where you need to (given that perfect calibration is unattainable) err on the side of being restrictive, but that's definitely not always the right choice.
jfoster 6y ago
They can ask nicely, but I expect it will have very little bearing on how people use these. Determining how things get used is what licenses are for.

I don’t care since the icon font approach is technically inferior to SVG icons: it’s monochrome only, whereas SVG supports colors and transparency. Icon fonts also suffer from a plethora of rendering issues across platforms because fonts are usually rendered with speedy display of long text in mind. It’s strange Google would invest in a years-old kludge tech.

jfoster 6y ago
Well, it's a good thing it's under Apache 2.0, then. Maybe someone will convert/trace them as SVGs and sublicense them...
- scoot 6y ago
  They're available as SVGs. They link to the GitHub repo at the top of the page, and if you select any icon, there's a download SVG button.
mappu 6y ago
Fonts can actually contain coloured glyphs now, originally for emoji. Although it does seem like a layering violation.
- eurasiantiger 6y ago
  Good luck recoloring them in CSS :/

ilogik 6y ago

y...yes? they should use an appropriate license

jfoster 6y ago
It's incredible that one of the biggest companies in the world can't manage to appropriately license their stuff. Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. I imagine they could've chosen it for license simplicity & compatibility reasons, but again, if they just wanted these to be used as widely as possible, they could've just gone CC0.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Apache 2.0 is also a strange license for anything that's not code, too; it refers to "source" and "object" form throughout. Fonts are code. And very often have a clear source vs. object form.
throwaway3699 6y ago
All Google is saying is don't scam others by reselling the same stuff that is freely available. Licensing it under something more restrictive (or custom) would make this a non-starter for other companies to reuse or remix.
dragonwriter 6y ago
Not every undesirable behavior can be blocked by firm rules without catching non-problematic behavior. Using a license which that errs on the side of being permissive rather than restrictive at the boundary and using social pressure to try to mitigate undesirable behavior in that boundary area seems a reasonable approach. (True for law, too, and lots of other domains.) There's some domains where you need to (given that perfect calibration is unattainable) err on the side of being restrictive, but that's definitely not always the right choice.

jfoster 6y ago

They can ask nicely, but I expect it will have very little bearing on how people use these. Determining how things get used is what licenses are for.