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1. Typefaces take a long time to develop - design, create, package. The process can take years. 2. Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be conte

1. Typefaces take a long time to develop - design, create, package. The process can take years. 2. Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial. 3. People that do this work should be compensated. 4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric in the blog post.

mr_justin 17y ago
Sure, but there has been this stalemate between font foundries and web designers for well over 10 years. I think this whole @font-face (1) thing is exactly what is needed to shake some sense into the foundries. Designers will start using the fonts they love, without needing to create a graphic, then the foundries will start freaking out and (hopefully) innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font. As a slightly different argument, using a font via @font-face is no different than using a graphic. Graphics can have usage permissions associated with them just like a font, so why do we need to invent a new means of distributing licensed fonts?
- jerf 17y ago
  "innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font." Innovation can only do what is possible. If the font foundries want it to be physically impossible to "steal" the font, there is simply no way to square that with making the font available over the web for the purpose of rendering it, without sacrificing too much usability to make it worth doing. Maybe IE can do it (although even then only dangerously, if you want it to be really secure), but there's no way to make it possible for Firefox, KHTML, and other open source browsers to use the font, but impossible to download it. They're just too open for that. And any solution based on leaving them out in the cold is rapidly becoming infeasible as IE may still have market share, but is very nearly the last closed-source browser of any significant still standing. Leave the handwaving of "innovative" solutions to impossible problems to the government.
  - Silhouette 17y ago
    You don't have to make it impossible, just awkward enough that (a) there is some incentive to pay up for the real thing, and more importantly (b) casual users who don't even know what copyright says or that ripping is illegal can't Just Do It. It would probably suffice to develop a standard where only an embedded subset of the font was transmitted by the web server, so you couldn't just download and install the .otf file or equivalent. That would probably save a worthwhile amount of bandwidth with modern fonts and their huge file sizes, too.
    - jerf 17y ago
      "You don't have to make it impossible," As it stands right now, you do, because the font foundries won't stand for anything less. If they were happy with probabilities they would have been in the game a long time ago. Note this is a social thing, not a technical thing.
      - Silhouette 17y ago
        My point was just that there is scope for a middle ground, where commercial font developers have some basic protection against drive-by copying but there is nothing so stupid and inhibiting that it prevents practical use of the fonts. Those foundries that choose not to work with such a scheme will inevitably find themselves at a commercial disadvantage relative to those that choose to do so.
w1ntermute 17y ago
"Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial." His point is that the commercial model has an enormous number of technical issues. Clearly, free fonts provide value in their technical superiority that overrides any aesthetic superiority of commercial fonts.
IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
1. Operating Systems take a long time to develop. The process can take years. 2. Operating Systems have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using punch cards. 3. People that do this work should be compensated. 4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric among linux nerds. I apologize for the snark. My point is that there's a striking similarity here. There are some arguments that Windows is superior to Linux, and once upon a time, those arguments might've been valid. They're not any more. It's crazy these days to plunk down $300 for Vista when Ubuntu is better, and free in every way. Quantity leads to quality—even if the average free font is much worse than the average proprietary font, a few of them will be very good, and will gain a lot of usage. There may still be a place for proprietary fonts. But the web will embrace the more open option. If the foundries want a piece of that action, they're going to have to change the way they do things.
- tptacek 17y ago
  In the contest between Windows and Ubuntu, almost everybody chooses Windows (a small minority chooses Windows non-free competitor OS X). This fact is inconvenient to your argument.
  - pingswept 17y ago
    Is the worldwide deployment of Vista comparable to the aggregate of the top 10 desktop Linux distributions? I don't know those numbers, but I think that's the important question (rather than just Windows vs. Ubuntu).
    - Silhouette 17y ago
      I would imagine that the total worldwide number of desktop Linux installations is statistically insignificant. Vista has never really taken hold, and XP is still the dominant OS by some way, but I've never seen a study that put desktop Linux even on the same order of magnitude as OS X.
latortuga 17y ago
The word 'should' always throws up red flags for me, as though it is a pre-accepted fact and not open to debate.

mr_justin 17y ago

Sure, but there has been this stalemate between font foundries and web designers for well over 10 years. I think this whole @font-face (1) thing is exactly what is needed to shake some sense into the foundries. Designers will start using the fonts they love, without needing to create a graphic, then the foundries will start freaking out and (hopefully) innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font. As a slightly different argument, using a font via @font-face is no different than using a graphic. Graphics can have usage permissions associated with them just like a font, so why do we need to invent a new means of distributing licensed fonts?

jerf 17y ago
"innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font." Innovation can only do what is possible. If the font foundries want it to be physically impossible to "steal" the font, there is simply no way to square that with making the font available over the web for the purpose of rendering it, without sacrificing too much usability to make it worth doing. Maybe IE can do it (although even then only dangerously, if you want it to be really secure), but there's no way to make it possible for Firefox, KHTML, and other open source browsers to use the font, but impossible to download it. They're just too open for that. And any solution based on leaving them out in the cold is rapidly becoming infeasible as IE may still have market share, but is very nearly the last closed-source browser of any significant still standing. Leave the handwaving of "innovative" solutions to impossible problems to the government.
- Silhouette 17y ago
  You don't have to make it impossible, just awkward enough that (a) there is some incentive to pay up for the real thing, and more importantly (b) casual users who don't even know what copyright says or that ripping is illegal can't Just Do It. It would probably suffice to develop a standard where only an embedded subset of the font was transmitted by the web server, so you couldn't just download and install the .otf file or equivalent. That would probably save a worthwhile amount of bandwidth with modern fonts and their huge file sizes, too.
  - jerf 17y ago
    "You don't have to make it impossible," As it stands right now, you do, because the font foundries won't stand for anything less. If they were happy with probabilities they would have been in the game a long time ago. Note this is a social thing, not a technical thing.
    - Silhouette 17y ago
      My point was just that there is scope for a middle ground, where commercial font developers have some basic protection against drive-by copying but there is nothing so stupid and inhibiting that it prevents practical use of the fonts. Those foundries that choose not to work with such a scheme will inevitably find themselves at a commercial disadvantage relative to those that choose to do so.

w1ntermute 17y ago

"Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial." His point is that the commercial model has an enormous number of technical issues. Clearly, free fonts provide value in their technical superiority that overrides any aesthetic superiority of commercial fonts.

IsaacSchlueter 17y ago

1. Operating Systems take a long time to develop. The process can take years. 2. Operating Systems have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using punch cards. 3. People that do this work should be compensated. 4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric among linux nerds. I apologize for the snark. My point is that there's a striking similarity here. There are some arguments that Windows is superior to Linux, and once upon a time, those arguments might've been valid. They're not any more. It's crazy these days to plunk down $300 for Vista when Ubuntu is better, and free in every way. Quantity leads to quality—even if the average free font is much worse than the average proprietary font, a few of them will be very good, and will gain a lot of usage. There may still be a place for proprietary fonts. But the web will embrace the more open option. If the foundries want a piece of that action, they're going to have to change the way they do things.

tptacek 17y ago
In the contest between Windows and Ubuntu, almost everybody chooses Windows (a small minority chooses Windows non-free competitor OS X). This fact is inconvenient to your argument.
- pingswept 17y ago
  Is the worldwide deployment of Vista comparable to the aggregate of the top 10 desktop Linux distributions? I don't know those numbers, but I think that's the important question (rather than just Windows vs. Ubuntu).
  - Silhouette 17y ago
    I would imagine that the total worldwide number of desktop Linux installations is statistically insignificant. Vista has never really taken hold, and XP is still the dominant OS by some way, but I've never seen a study that put desktop Linux even on the same order of magnitude as OS X.

latortuga 17y ago

The word 'should' always throws up red flags for me, as though it is a pre-accepted fact and not open to debate.