A rant on web font licenses
manuelmoreale.com
A rant on web font licenses
1–10 of 169 posts
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#2I like Matthew Butterick’s approach. He sells whole families at a time (on a pay-once basis), offers discounts if you get the whole library, and the license is short, to the point, and reasonable: https://mbtype.com/license/
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#3> Typefaces are, to the best of my knowledge, the only digital product that try to fuck you over with bullshit licenses.
Oh, if only that were true.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#4> Typefaces are, to the best of my knowledge, the only digital product that try to fuck you over with bullshit licenses
Has Oracle disappeared?
The article is kind of true though, especially when you need a font for a small part of your website like headers, the licence often make it not worth it if you're not a company.
There's no middle ground between "here's your free font" and "pay me/us a lot of money".
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#5I like Matthew Butterick’s approach. He sells whole families at a time (on a pay-once basis), offers discounts if you get the whole library, and the license is short, to the point, and reasonable: https://mbtype.com/license/
Thanks for the recommendation. That's truly a no bullshit licensing approach. Wish everyone would do it that way.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#6Pricing like this has always made me wonder if there's some behind the scenes deals going on, where the web and font designer work together to sell some deep pocketed corporation on a site redesign that uses an expensive font, then split the recurring revenue.
This likely would work in that case, as font licensing would be some small line item on the final bill.
In moving previous employer away from an expensive designer who charged thousands of dollars a month to host a <100k/pageviews a month site that had minimally modified wordpress, they couldn't ever come up with valid license for the fonts used, so I also wonder if the licenses are ever actually enforced.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#7Indie type foundries are proliferating and I've seen so many amazing designs. I wish I could buy them all, but as a programmer I don't get a lot of chance to play with them.
This issue doesn't just affect bloggers and small time content creators, either. Lots of big companies are commissioning their own typefaces or switching their brand standards to use free fonts. It's such a shame – I would love to see more variety and expressiveness out there.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#8Purchasing a font license for a personal website is an insane and sadistic extravagance, like pissing away $200 on a t-shirt.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#9And yet this sort of license is unlikely to disappear. This is as it's not targeted at individuals or small teams, it's for large orgs who won't bat an eye and chalk it up to the cost of building the service.
Re: A rant on web font licenses
#10I like Matthew Butterick’s approach. He sells whole families at a time (on a pay-once basis), offers discounts if you get the whole library, and the license is short, to the point, and reasonable: https://mbtype.com/license/
Thanks for the recommendation. That's truly a no bullshit licensing approach. Wish everyone would do it that way.
I love that the license includes the phrase “internet randos”.