1. Typefaces take a long time to develop - design, create, package. The process can take years.
2. Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial.
3. People that do this work should be compensated.
4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric in the blog post.
"Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial."
His point is that the commercial model has an enormous number of technical issues. Clearly, free fonts provide value in their technical superiority that overrides any aesthetic superiority of commercial fonts.
1. Operating Systems take a long time to develop. The process can take years.
2. Operating Systems have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using punch cards.
3. People that do this work should be compensated.
4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric among linux nerds.
I apologize for the snark. My point is that there's a striking similarity here. There are some arguments that Windows is superior to Linux, and once upon a time, those arguments might've been valid. They're not any more. It's crazy these days to plunk down $300 for Vista when Ubuntu is better, and free in every way.
Quantity leads to quality—even if the average free font is much worse than the average proprietary font, a few of them will be very good, and will gain a lot of usage.
There may still be a place for proprietary fonts. But the web will embrace the more open option. If the foundries want a piece of that action, they're going to have to change the way they do things.
You seem to be living in a world that does not have much to do with reality. It's not "crazy" to pay $300 for Vista when the programs you know are on Vista. People are paying $300 right this moment to not have to use Ubuntu.
Quantity does not lead to quality - if it did everyone would be using open source web design. Why are they not?
In the contest between Windows and Ubuntu, almost everybody chooses Windows (a small minority chooses Windows non-free competitor OS X). This fact is inconvenient to your argument.
I don't know, I see people beginning to use linux in my social circle, even non-technical users. Would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. Nothing scientific here but I get the definite impression linux is gaining momentum.
MacOSX user here btw, not a desktop linux zealot at all, just reporting what I see anecdotally.
The best thing MS could do for linux is perfect its anti-piracy strategy. If it was impossible to pirate Windows, Linux would explode I reckon.
So web usage is comparable, but Vista seems to be well ahead. At the same time I suspect that deployments are quite a bit different than web usage, so take that with a grain of salt.
I would imagine that the total worldwide number of desktop Linux installations is statistically insignificant. Vista has never really taken hold, and XP is still the dominant OS by some way, but I've never seen a study that put desktop Linux even on the same order of magnitude as OS X.
If you look at the links posted above, the w3schools.com numbers, 4% and 6%, are not even a binary order of magnitude apart, never mind the usually meant decimal (10x spread).
The w3counter.com numbers are 2% and 5%. Both single digits (hint).
There are whole companies out there doing engineering work on Linux, except for a few odd laptops. Actually, site http proxies may cause Unix web undercount (i.e. stats are dominated by home access, presumably with lower Unix use).
Do you seriously believe that the visitors to a site like w3schools.com are even close to representative of the population as a whole?
There are indeed whole companies out there doing engineering work on Linux; I've worked with some of them. But they are a tiny fraction of all companies, and the desktops in most companies run Windows. Of those that don't, I'm sure Linux has had a few big successes, but Apple sells all those computers to someone. As I said, I've never seen a study that puts Linux even close. If you've got more up-to-date information that is actually representative, go ahead and share it, but please don't pretend that the server log from a random web site is a real study.
Sure, but there has been this stalemate between font foundries and web designers for well over 10 years.
I think this whole @font-face (1) thing is exactly what is needed to shake some sense into the foundries. Designers will start using the fonts they love, without needing to create a graphic, then the foundries will start freaking out and (hopefully) innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font.
As a slightly different argument, using a font via @font-face is no different than using a graphic. Graphics can have usage permissions associated with them just like a font, so why do we need to invent a new means of distributing licensed fonts?
"innovate new, standards-based methods of using a designer-chosen font without sacrificing the usage rights of said font."
Innovation can only do what is possible. If the font foundries want it to be physically impossible to "steal" the font, there is simply no way to square that with making the font available over the web for the purpose of rendering it, without sacrificing too much usability to make it worth doing. Maybe IE can do it (although even then only dangerously, if you want it to be really secure), but there's no way to make it possible for Firefox, KHTML, and other open source browsers to use the font, but impossible to download it. They're just too open for that. And any solution based on leaving them out in the cold is rapidly becoming infeasible as IE may still have market share, but is very nearly the last closed-source browser of any significant still standing.
Leave the handwaving of "innovative" solutions to impossible problems to the government.
You don't have to make it impossible, just awkward enough that (a) there is some incentive to pay up for the real thing, and more importantly (b) casual users who don't even know what copyright says or that ripping is illegal can't Just Do It.
It would probably suffice to develop a standard where only an embedded subset of the font was transmitted by the web server, so you couldn't just download and install the .otf file or equivalent. That would probably save a worthwhile amount of bandwidth with modern fonts and their huge file sizes, too.
As it stands right now, you do, because the font foundries won't stand for anything less. If they were happy with probabilities they would have been in the game a long time ago.
Note this is a social thing, not a technical thing.
My point was just that there is scope for a middle ground, where commercial font developers have some basic protection against drive-by copying but there is nothing so stupid and inhibiting that it prevents practical use of the fonts. Those foundries that choose not to work with such a scheme will inevitably find themselves at a commercial disadvantage relative to those that choose to do so.
2. Typefaces have a value. If they didn't people would be content just using Arial.
3. People that do this work should be compensated.
4. Trying to figure out a solution to this problem, both from a customers and creators view is more beneficial than the "fuck this, fuck that" rhetoric in the blog post.