3 ms·

Calling out for the common folk or small business to pay for the fonts they used is doomed to fail. (Not saying the article does that, just pointing it out.) Ca

Calling out for the common folk or small business to pay for the fonts they used is doomed to fail. (Not saying the article does that, just pointing it out.) Calling out to fight insane legal practices is even less likely to ever succeed as well. IMO a good solution to both licensing plus compensating the hard-working people who make fonts would be: 1. Integrate those fonts in the mainstream browsers; 2. Have the browser vendors pay a flat fee to the font creators, annually. I think something like $20_000 per font per year is quite fair and definitely won't even register in the balance sheets of Google, Apple and Mozilla. There's no way this whole thing can be solved by making small customers pay. Even if some do most will not so such a business strategy simply doesn't scale. Even if I make $10_000 a month from a small business of mine I'd still not consider paying something like $500 for a font unless I am sure I am going to use it for 4-5 years. In my eyes it's an insanely high cost for just one tiny part of my online business. But one thing I don't know and would love to learn more about is this: are the professional fonts usually paid per month or only once for a lifetime? If the latter then I guess many smaller business could still bear the cost.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Let’s not bake anymore things in a browser. There are too many typefaces. I don’t want to rely on the browser to integrate a work of art that I created. The way it is, the current situation, allows the typographer to sell directly to consumers and select appropriate license. Whether that’s expensive or too restrictive is besides the point. There is a plethora of cheap fonts. Not only would your idea kill creativity and bring font development to a standstill, it would put too much power in the hands of browsers which are already too powerful.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Let’s not bake anymore things in a browser. There are too many typefaces. I don’t want to rely on the browser to integrate a work of art that I created. The way it is, the current situation, allows the typographer to sell directly to consumers and select appropriate license. Whether that’s expensive or too restrictive is besides the point. There is a plethora of cheap fonts. Not only would your idea kill creativity and bring font development to a standstill, it would put too much power in the hands of browsers which are already too powerful.