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You wouldn't steal a font

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Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#331

Post by bdelmas »

gkoberger wrote: post #141
lolinder wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even under this analogy you're complaining about the price of luxury goods and saying that it's no wonder people shoplift to steal the truffles because they're so darn expensive. If you can't afford the license for the font, your app is small-time enough that you can make do with one of the many, many high-quality fonts that are available for free, there's no need to pirate it. If your app is big enough that the diff…

No, I'm saying a Michelin chef can complain about a 50x increase in the cost of truffles without negating the fact that a lot of people happily survive on ramen.

A high price in a font won't sink a business as a high price in truffle would for a Michelin chef... The price of a font for a business is extremely negligible... Or again you shouldn't buy it if your business is too small. And if it's that small you should be able to justify the value added by buying that font as truffle does for the chef.

So we are back at what OP said.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#332

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #158
gkoberger wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying a Michelin chef can complain about a 50x increase in the cost of truffles without negating the fact that a lot of people happily survive on ramen.

No, those things aren't comparable. Truffles have a functional role in a dish. A typeface does not have a meaningful functional role in a document, compared to the high-quality freely-available alternatives. This is like complaining about some kind of specially-carved or dyed truffle.

[deleted]

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#333

Post by jeroenhd »

jchw wrote: post #22

I don't know if this actually counts as copyright infringement, since typeface shapes are not eligible for copyright in the U.S. (disclaimer: IANAL) so depending on how it was cloned, it might be legal. The more amusing detail, to me, is whether or not XBAND Rough is related to the XBAND peripheral for video game consoles in the 90s. (Fascinating story, it was an add-on that enabled multiplayer over a phoneline on th…

I find it pretty funny that the American legal system explicitly doesn't copyright fonts (which are quite obviously creative works, in my opinion) but still enforces software patents.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#334

Post by mark-r »

robertlagrant wrote: post #306
behringer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are the fonts so expensive?

> Then why are the fonts so expensive? Because they're considered important, and definitely take a long time to make. Try making one.

Not to mention that it's almost impossible to make a living designing fonts.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#335

Post by mark-r »

biercarsten wrote: post #315
ghaff wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because designers fuss a lot about nearly undetectable differences in color, fonts, and many other things. Maybe they make a difference in the aggregate. But if you can’t identify the difference between Ariak and Helvetica (to pick a particularly glaring example) you’re probably not one of those designers.

I agree. Many people can hardly tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica. There used to be a website where you could test how good you are at telling them apart. You won't notice many small differences between certain fonts. But that doesn't mean they're unnecessary. As you said, they make a difference when taken together. For screens, there are a number of adjustments and techniques that improve screen readab…

USED to be a website? Aww, I did pretty well there - going to miss it.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#336

Post by tasuki »

kevingadd wrote: post #174
tptacek wrote: post #92

Earlier 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.

The fonts loaded on one machine are typically not loaded reliably on all machines, so you need to distribute fonts with your application. Doing this is probably a violation of the license that all those "free fonts" were distributed under, so your only options are: 1. Public Domain Fonts 2. Fonts that cost money The set of public domain fonts is pretty small and most of them are low quality - not all, thankfully - an…

What? There's an endless supply of permissively licensed fonts, eg on Google Fonts. Many of them are actually pretty good. Yes, you'll find some bad ones too.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#337

Post by rossy »

r721 wrote: post #201

>Powered by Iceshrimp Sort of off-topic, but interesting engine, which I never heard about (wasn't ever mentioned on HN either: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Iceshrimp ): >Iceshrimp is a decentralized and federated social networking service, implementing the ActivityPub standard. https://iceshrimp.dev/iceshrimp/iceshrimp.net

Iceshrimp, or at least this JavaScript version of it, is a fork of Misskey, which has been mentioned on HN a few times. If you've heard of Mastodon, Misskey and its forks participate in the same decentralized social network - Mastodon users can like and comment on the tweet-like posts that a Misskey user makes and vice-versa.

The Iceshrimp devs are also working on a "port" to .NET that's basically a brand new social media app, but with an upgrade path from the JavaScript version.

I also use Iceshrimp to self-host my own fediverse account and I think it's pretty good software. I think it has a better UI that Mastodon and it has some cutesy features that Mastodon lacks, like being able to emoji-react to posts.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#338

Post by pc86 »

bdelmas wrote: post #331
gkoberger wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying a Michelin chef can complain about a 50x increase in the cost of truffles without negating the fact that a lot of people happily survive on ramen.

A high price in a font won't sink a business as a high price in truffle would for a Michelin chef... The price of a font for a business is extremely negligible... Or again you shouldn't buy it if your business is too small. And if it's that small you should be able to justify the value added by buying that font as truffle does for the chef. So we are back at what OP said.

Well the analogy falls apart because (among many, many other reasons) the people eating at Michelin rated restaurants, especially 3-star, are completely insensitive to the price. It will cost whatever it costs and there will still be a long wait to get a table, if you even can.

So rather than pretending we're talking about truffles, let's just talk about fonts directly without strained analogies. Fonts, which the majority of people don't even recognize. 90% of people don't even know what a foundry is. Your average person can't tell the difference between any two fonts if they're both sans-serif or serif.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#339

Post by pc86 »

mark-r wrote: post #334
robertlagrant wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why are the fonts so expensive? Because they're considered important, and definitely take a long time to make. Try making one.

Not to mention that it's almost impossible to make a living designing fonts.

Maybe "this font is offensively priced to the point where I immediately think the person selling it is a criminal using this for money laundering, or clinically insane" and "it's hard to sell enough fonts to live off of" are related?

Maybe if charlatans didn't say with a straight face that a font should be sold on a subscription model they'd sell more? Maybe if it didn't cost as much as a car they'd sell more?

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#340

Post by ghaff »

biercarsten wrote: post #315
ghaff wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because designers fuss a lot about nearly undetectable differences in color, fonts, and many other things. Maybe they make a difference in the aggregate. But if you can’t identify the difference between Ariak and Helvetica (to pick a particularly glaring example) you’re probably not one of those designers.

I agree. Many people can hardly tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica. There used to be a website where you could test how good you are at telling them apart. You won't notice many small differences between certain fonts. But that doesn't mean they're unnecessary. As you said, they make a difference when taken together. For screens, there are a number of adjustments and techniques that improve screen readab…

And there are also design fashions. I tend to dislike a lot of the current designs by seemingly 20 something’s with perfect vision that use rake-thin fonts in some grey tone.
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