4 ms·

I found the bit that says "If not, you probably don’t care about fonts, so it will be Comic Sans" unnecesarily agressive and false: his post displayed completel

I found the bit that says "If not, you probably don’t care about fonts, so it will be Comic Sans" unnecesarily agressive and false: his post displayed completely in Droid Serif for me. I don't install Helvetica Neue or Comic Sans on my Linux machine because I don't have a license for those fonts (I guess you get one for Helvetica Neue with your copy of iOS, right?).

foobarbazqux 13y ago
Comic Sans is one of the MS core fonts for the web and is free to use. Your distro probably calls the package corefonts or something. I'm guessing that Debian doesn't include it in main because it's a non-free license with respect to distribution and modification, but you certainly have permission to use it and you might even be allowed to include its glyphs in documents that you sell.
- omaranto 13y ago
  Are you sure about Comic Sans? The only information I could find from Microsoft was on their font redistribution FAQ [1] and it says Until recently, most fonts that include a Microsoft copyright or trademark notice have only been available as part of Microsoft products. Although some fonts remain Microsoft-exclusive, a number of Microsoft fonts are now available to end users, ISVs and OEMs under license from Ascender Corporation. These include 'Verdana', 'Georgia', 'Comic Sans MS', 'Microsoft Sans Serif', 'Nina', 'Tahoma', 'Wingdings', 'Webdings' and 'Trebuchet MS'. Doesn't that mean that to use Comic Sans you have to negotiate with Ascender Corporation? I couldn't find anything on Ascender's website suggesting any font at all was free to use (I didn't read everything carefully though), and about the MS core web fonts specifically this page [2] makes it sounds like you need to buy a license from them to use them: Monotype is proud to offer the Microsoft Web Core Fonts for license to software developers and hardware manufacturers who want to provide a consistent web browsing experience in their products. Please contact Monotype for more information about the Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. [1] http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx [2] http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-fonts/ http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-fonts...
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Basically Microsoft screwed up with the license for version 2, and it's legal to redistribute and use them, at least as an end user. They changed things for later versions. There's a good amount of coverage of the legal status on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web

foobarbazqux 13y ago

Comic Sans is one of the MS core fonts for the web and is free to use. Your distro probably calls the package corefonts or something. I'm guessing that Debian doesn't include it in main because it's a non-free license with respect to distribution and modification, but you certainly have permission to use it and you might even be allowed to include its glyphs in documents that you sell.

omaranto 13y ago
Are you sure about Comic Sans? The only information I could find from Microsoft was on their font redistribution FAQ [1] and it says Until recently, most fonts that include a Microsoft copyright or trademark notice have only been available as part of Microsoft products. Although some fonts remain Microsoft-exclusive, a number of Microsoft fonts are now available to end users, ISVs and OEMs under license from Ascender Corporation. These include 'Verdana', 'Georgia', 'Comic Sans MS', 'Microsoft Sans Serif', 'Nina', 'Tahoma', 'Wingdings', 'Webdings' and 'Trebuchet MS'. Doesn't that mean that to use Comic Sans you have to negotiate with Ascender Corporation? I couldn't find anything on Ascender's website suggesting any font at all was free to use (I didn't read everything carefully though), and about the MS core web fonts specifically this page [2] makes it sounds like you need to buy a license from them to use them: Monotype is proud to offer the Microsoft Web Core Fonts for license to software developers and hardware manufacturers who want to provide a consistent web browsing experience in their products. Please contact Monotype for more information about the Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. [1] http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx [2] http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-fonts/ http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/web-core-fonts...
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Basically Microsoft screwed up with the license for version 2, and it's legal to redistribute and use them, at least as an end user. They changed things for later versions. There's a good amount of coverage of the legal status on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web