Earlier quoted context omitted.
And god forbid you to accidently ship the font with your game or mobile app! :)
How does one even use a font in an app without shipping it with the app? In a logo or something?
You can trace it, I guess...
You wouldn't steal a font
111–120 of 421 posts
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.
I agree the average person is likely fine with the fonts on their computer, but this is profoundly misunderstanding the importance of design. Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries. I'd argue that complaining about font prices is less like a Hermes bag, and more like complaining about high-end ingredients when a supermarket has cheap stuff. Yes, you can get away with cheaper materials when co…
Modern included fonts aren’t that bad. It’s more like using tomato sauce instead of fancy handmade chilli.
Your meal doesn’t deeply suffer, it’s just a bit bland.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.
I agree the average person is likely fine with the fonts on their computer, but this is profoundly misunderstanding the importance of design. Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries. I'd argue that complaining about font prices is less like a Hermes bag, and more like complaining about high-end ingredients when a supermarket has cheap stuff. Yes, you can get away with cheaper materials when co…
There are roughly zero apps out there that would ”deeply suffer” from having to use freely available and/or system supported fonts.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#114Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…
This maybe isn't relevant to your point, but the story in question is from long before mobile apps.
Also, just for anyone cruising the comments before reading the story, it is more about the "You wouldn't steal a car" PSA's from >20-ish years ago. I don't recall there being any explicit advocacy for font licensing anywhere in it.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#115Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…
I only purchase fonts for graphic design projects (mostly branding). For UIs I'm perfectly happy with Google Fonts.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the average person is likely fine with the fonts on their computer, but this is profoundly misunderstanding the importance of design. Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries. I'd argue that complaining about font prices is less like a Hermes bag, and more like complaining about high-end ingredients when a supermarket has cheap stuff. Yes, you can get away with cheaper materials when co…
There are roughly zero apps out there that would ”deeply suffer” from having to use freely available and/or system supported fonts.
That's not true at all. You think games would feel as immersive if everything was Calibri? Magazine-style articles would feel as tactile if they all used the same system fonts? Etc.
You may not care about fonts, but to say they don't matter is a misunderstanding. For example, I could glibly say we only need one programming language (the user doesn't care what syntax you used before it was compiled down to 1s and 0s!), but any engineer would make the case why that's not true at all.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am of the opinion that the licenses for fonts in software are too expensive, but why is the pricing ‘backwards’? Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do.
> Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do. Do you have a citation for that? Printing a book costs just about nothing, it’s astonishingly cheap to print a quality book in volume. Author royalties are not that high (I suppose famous authors whose name alone sell books is another story), then you have retail margins and overhead. The top three book publishers’ have sales in the low billi…
Short answer: Nobody fucking knows because the accounting is more non-GAAP than your typical investment fraud house.
A few spots for folks interested in some amount of numbers:
https://slate.com/culture/2024/04/book-sales-publishing-indu...
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#118What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
I remember trying to explain to some colleagues why I paid about 100 bucks for the font I use and why I wouldn’t share it with them and they just couldn’t get it. (It’s Berkeley mono). I don’t even know how many glyphs it is (it’s thousands) but for something I’m looking at for 6-8 hours a day, every single day and is the absolute peak of perfection (at least to me), 100 bucks seems like a fucking bargain to me. shru…
> Berkeley Mono
Link for the lazy https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-font-variant-popul...
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, AFAIK, the general assumption is every font is absurdly easy to steal, and that you'll do so before purchasing it. So it's de facto "free unlimited trial, free for personal use, pay for business if you have a soul and shame"
I would suggest not pushing your luck with webfonts though, because in that case you are distributing the actual copyrighted "code" of the font, not just the minimally protected shapes that it outputs. There are services which crawl the web actively looking for pirated webfonts on behalf of foundries (and their lawyers).
How robust is that identification? Does it just look for file hashes or identical character shapes? I imagine it is trivial to repackage a font file to break the hash fingerprint.
Re: You wouldn't steal a font
#120Bought the Adobe Font Folio -- TWICE.
Now, every single font in the font folio is free with a $30./month Adobe sub.