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I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front. It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USDS (US Digital Service) was born in the fire of the healthcare.gov fiasco, and several industry veterans from Google stepped in to fix the infrastructure issues they saw within the US Government. Currently, @Matt_Cutts is leading the org. I can only think that your comment brings a smile to his face.
Does anyone know what it's like working for the USDS? Curious what it's like to work for the Government but under the leadership of presumably a bunch of ex-Googlers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many (most?) of those typefaces are commercially licensed, and can't serve as a universal "default" for typography across all the USG's web properties. Additionally: almost none of them are in OS/browser font stacks, so using them would incur logistical problems in addition to licensing.
I don't understand your second point. Public Sans isn't in OS/browser font stacks, either. What makes its inclusion more likely than, say, a 15 year-old open source font like DejaVu Sans?
I agree that there are other typefaces they could use! I was mostly commenting on how a list of faces that includes Avenir, Univers, and FF Meta was probably not the best summary of the available options.
Is it legal for the federal government to specify a font license other than “This is released into the public domain”? They automatically give up all copyright upon publication, which ought to exhaust any licensing terms.
IANAL, I believe the whole idea behind GPL is to make sure GPL supersede what you might claim otherwise. So if the federal government can possibly make a derived work into public domain (or crown copyright if UK) instead of GPL, that's a loophole in GPL! (I know this work is not GPL, but similar idea applies)
The question neither this page nor the GitHub answers is... why? I understand a lot of corporations did their own fonts to escape font licensing. Is there fonts the government is currently licensing and trying to get out from under? Where will I see this font? Is there a reason other open source fonts weren't already adequate?
A typeface expresses many things, you can imagine it as different sliders along, say, 100 different dimensions, similar to songs expressing combinations of feelings.
An off-the-shelf typeface will express things that are close to exactly what you're looking for, but almost never exactly 100%. Commissioning a font gives you exactly the visual identity you're looking for, zero compromises.
Additionally, distinctiveness/uniqueness has its own value too -- corporations commission typefaces so no other brand will share the same identity. For a large nation-state, that carries the same value.
(Although, unlike a company like Microsoft or IBM, I'm not sure if the US Government can prevent any private company from using it?)
This is so interesting. These modern sites clash really hard with my mental visual of "Government technology." And it led me to this, which is maybe even more interesting: https://federalist.18f.gov/
Yup. I run Federalist at 18F and absolutely love the work, the challenge and colleagues. We do everything in the open, so feel free to follow our work here: https://github.com/18F/federalist We also implement the USWDS, which you can follow here: https://github.com/18F/federalist-uswds-jekyll Let me know if you have any questions!
I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front. It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.
What if the progression ends up being: 1. Publicly-funded font(s) created 2. Use on govt websites grows 3. Publicly-funded CDN used for said govt site assets 4. Other, non-govt sites use said font(s) 5. Govt becomes asset host for web basics across thousands of non-govt sites This may be another step in CDN lifecycle of startup --> megacorp --> commoditization --> govt service.
Why would we go beyond step 2? As a taxpayer, I could buy the argument that the govt needs a new font, and that, having made one, it should make said font available for free so taxpayers can get the benefit. I don't see why my taxes should fund a public CDN, though.
In that case, it's also possible (probable, even) that some particularly-lazily-developed smaller sites would simply point to those same CDNs instead of hosting things themselves (much like how quite a few sites point toward CDN-hosted versions of jQuery and FontAwesome and such).
The only remaining step would then be for that taxpayer-funded CDN to cache any and all taxpayer-funded static assets.
I've been wondering why all these new fonts tend to have a strong focus on sans serif font (Fira has no serif variant, Source Serif Pro came later than the other Source fonts). Aren't there a lot of situations (namely, lengthy legal documents) where you'd prefer a serif font before you want a sans serif?
For print sure serifs are good but again it depends. There are many highly readable sans serifs (that have big x-height).
I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front. It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.