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Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

fontcdn.toolforge.org

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Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#41

Post by mmarx »

ryan_lane wrote: post #37

This is on toolforge, so while it's technically on Wikimedia run infrastructure (Wikimedia cloud services), the tool itself is maintained by a community member. If you use this outside of the Wikimedia cloud services environment (toolforge and Cloud VPS), then you're asking for trouble. My guess is someone added this tool for other tools to use. There's no way this is being used on the production wikis.

> My guess is someone added this tool for other tools to use.

That's precisely what it's for; and there's a cdnjs mirror as well, for the same reason.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#42

Post by chrismorgan »

atonse wrote: post #33
chrismorgan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

Picking the font based on the browser – surely there's an open source plugin for NGINX or something that could replicate this? This is a perfect sort of thing as a Caddy plugin too. Or a CDN provider to provide this out of the box. The CloudFlare people could do this in a weekend probably and I'd happily sign up because I'm less concerned about my privacy with CF than with Google. But is this even an issue? If you de…

Sure, it’s called the bulletproof @font-face syntax. But that means you’ve got to get the fonts in all of the formats, for starters. I don’t think it’s worth it at all, for the stated reason. Three years ago maybe, but definitely not now.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#43

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lucideer wrote: post #26
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another issue is copyright, which for typefaces and fonts varies considerably by jurisdiction - using Google seems to offload liability as long as you use it within their terms then they should at least be the leading co-party if a rights owner sued.

> seems to Do you have a source for this? IANAL but if a Google font was disallowed for a jurisdiction, Google would be in legal trouble for advertising/hosting it on their own site, but that would be a separate case. I seriously doubt they'd share any of the liability for you using it on your site.

No source, just a feel for it as I've studied quite a few copyright cases.

I guess it's like me having an embedded video except that for the fonts Google have uploaded the media, not the public. If I watch a video on YouTube that was a copyright infringing upload, strictly (in my jurisdiction), I would have also committed infringement. But the courts are exceedingly unlikely to punish me, especially if the uploader warranted the video for my use.

Google say the fonts they have are free-libre for website use: https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq.

That's an implied warranty, I should do due diligence, but if they have doubts they should temper what they say too (they probably attempt to disclaim the implied warranty in their Terms). If they're offering fonts that are not "open source" they are in the wrong; I might also be wrong but I should - when using the fonts as they direct - be able to sue them in turn if I'm sued for using the fonts they offer.

It's not joint liability, but in general the law accounts for people being deceived. It's not negligent infringement on my part, IMO, as I checked the Google info for the license terms and have no reason to suspect they're wrong.

If the BBC put on a tv show they don't have copyright permission to air, and I suggest in my magazine article that you watch the show, I've directed you towards infringing material - which may be contributory infringement (in UK) - but the BBC would be the principle offender. If the BBC make statements saying the work is free-libre, and I rely on that then to me they appear severally liable, and liable for deceiving me.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#44

Post by zamubafoo »

Nextgrid wrote: post #30
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ads are the only use case for fonts, all the more reasons to kill them with fire.

I hate ads as much as everyone else, but branding goes beyond ads and is valuable.

Rasterize your content or serve SVG?

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#46

Post by WorldMaker »

whoopdedo wrote: post #10

My idea, a browser extension that downloads a mirror of the most popular fonts and intercepts requests to google inserting device local CSS instead. Might not be desirable for mobile devices, but with ample storage you get faster page loading and no telemetry sent to anyone.

All browser font systems already prefer locally installed fonts to CSS @font-face lookups.

The tool SkyFonts (from Monotype foundry and recommended by stores like MyFonts.com) as one of several features as a "cloud font updater" includes a "download the top X Google Fonts" option. It's an easy way to get a faster page load experience on the web.

The problem to watch out for, and it is why it's not generally recommended, is that font loading times are already in the wild a privacy issue (there are fingerprinting tools out there that try to download fonts and draw them in an off-screen CANVAS, using "too fast" as a deanonymization vector).

The best bet to generally help the web at large would be a browser or OS vendor to start installing the Top X fonts from Google Fonts out of the box.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#47

Post by jcahill »

chrismorgan wrote: post #21
jcahill wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other advantage of a font CDN is updating.

I don’t know if Google Fonts has changed its policies, but historically it pretty much just hasn’t updated its fonts. Even when repeatedly asked to by the original font’s author. Take as an example Crimson from https://github.com/skosch/Crimson : Google took Crimson Text in 2010 and put it onto Google Fonts, but mangled it in the process , messing up its line-height badly so that the regular and bold weights didn’t m…

Updating is mostly relevant for unicode completionist families and emoji.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#48

Post by WorldMaker »

Doxin wrote: post #16
forty wrote: post #15

Why are people adding external fonts everywhere? Aren't there enough fonts built in browsers to make most people happy?

There are exactly 0 fonts built in to browsers. You could try using fonts installed on the system but that tends to devolve in a cross-platform compatibility mess.

There is a set of 7 fonts widely distributed enough to be considered "web safe" if not built in to browsers (and at one point most browsers installed them if they were not already supported by the OS, but today almost all OSes support them directly so most browsers no longer ship them directly), but it's not a particularly great set: Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Comic Sans, Georgia, Times New Roman, and Courier New.

Even if those were somehow the 7 "best" fonts in all of the world, there's still a need to support external fonts because fonts are a tool for creative expression. Creative expression might not always be what you want from the web, but as a 90s Web fan, a web without creative expression would be a terrible web.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#49

Post by WorldMaker »

jcahill wrote: post #47
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if Google Fonts has changed its policies, but historically it pretty much just hasn’t updated its fonts. Even when repeatedly asked to by the original font’s author. Take as an example Crimson from https://github.com/skosch/Crimson : Google took Crimson Text in 2010 and put it onto Google Fonts, but mangled it in the process , messing up its line-height badly so that the regular and bold weights didn’t m…

Updating is mostly relevant for unicode completionist families and emoji.

Like all art, fonts are rarely completed and merely published. Hinting especially seems like a fine art that is never done, there's always more things to hint, and more hints to tweak towards perfection of the typographic art.

Some of my favorite fonts have regular releases. As with most art, software enables a more regular release cadence than past such systems. (Such as the days when font foundry was literal and fonts were published to metal and distributed in giant physical cases.)

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#50

Post by Doxin »

WorldMaker wrote: post #48
Doxin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are exactly 0 fonts built in to browsers. You could try using fonts installed on the system but that tends to devolve in a cross-platform compatibility mess.

There is a set of 7 fonts widely distributed enough to be considered "web safe" if not built in to browsers (and at one point most browsers installed them if they were not already supported by the OS, but today almost all OSes support them directly so most browsers no longer ship them directly), but it's not a particularly great set: Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Comic Sans, Georgia, Times New Roman, and Courier New. Ev…

Notably that set of fonts excludes most linux installs, given their licenses.
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