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Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

The pricing model of programming fonts makes no sense. Most seem to be sold at standard desktop font licensing rates, i.e. the $30 to $100 range. 99.999% of developers are not going to spend this much on a nice-to-have.

On the other hand, if these fonts were priced at around $5, they drop into the range of an easy, impulse purchase. Even if the creators made substantially less money on each license, I'm sure they'd make more overall from much higher sales.

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I don't think a font author would see a 20x uptick in sales if they priced a $100 programming font at $5. We are arguing a counterfactual though so it's hard to say.

> Most seem to be sold at standard desktop font licensing rates, i.e. the $30 to $100 range. 99.999% of developers are not going to spend this much on a nice-to-have.

Sure, but 99.9989% aren't going to spend money on programming fonts, period.

Then I'm in those 0.0011%. That is, if any reasonably priced font actually managed to be better than Bitstream Vera Sans Mono / DejaVu Sans Mono in my view.

Is it less work to design and produce a good programming font? Or is there a larger target market at a lower price? In other words, what market forces would make the price go down for this one category of fonts? Personally I doubt that a programmer who wouldn't spend $100 for a font would spend $5, and you have to sell 20x as many to make up the difference.

Obviously, it's not less work. Given the need to develop complex additional ligatures, it's likely more.

> I doubt that a programmer who wouldn't spend $100 for a font would spend $5

This is where we disagree then. I think there is a big psychological difference for most consumers, including devs, between spending $5 and $100. Even if you can afford both, the former falls into the range of impulse purchases, like getting a sandwich or a cup of coffee, where you spend without really thinking.

On the other hand, I think a $100 price is far more likely to trigger a more analytical and skeptical response. Do I really need it? Is it worth it? Should I research alternatives? Maybe, I should think about it and decide tomorrow... Etc. And the consequence will be a huge drop in sales.

Also, I also do think there are significant differences in the market for programming fonts vs. general desktop fonts. The market for a single font is likely a relatively small pool of designers / content creators who are spending their employers money, need it to complete a specific project, and who value achieving a unique look. The former is a larger market, who are spending their own money on a nice-to-have, and who don't particularly care about uniqueness.

All good points but I think at the $5 level you're also competing with "free". There are a lot of comments here suggesting fonts like Iosevka which are open source/free. In any case my point was that we don't really have to debate what the market "would do": there isn't a market for $5 fonts but there is for $100 fonts. It's possible that nobody has figured out there's a gap and therefore an opportunity. Or font makers have found that they make more money selling fewer licenses.

I would spend $5 on a font, but would not spend $100. I would buy the font the author of this article likes for even $10, but it costs $200 (for just the monospaced variant).

The price point for fonts is set for people who intend to use the font to make money – like graphic designers. One could imagine a lower price point for private use, similar to media.

> In other words, what market forces would make the price go down for this one category of fonts?

The font a programmer uses has absolutely no bearing on the products they produce or the money they make. Unlike graphic design, where a licensed font becomes a direct part of the sold product.

I would pay the going rate for a font that I used every day (or expense it, anyway) but a splash page isn't enough to determine whether I would make a font my daily driver, especially since current fashion is quite different from my own environment.

(I do use a font ‘with character’, Fantasque Sans Mono)

Meh, it took me a while, but I eventually shelled out for PragmataPro after hearing many good things about it. It may not be big, but there is a market.

Speaking of pricing, I personally believe that communication forms and methods should not be copyrightable. This includes fonts.

I mean, what is next, someone copyrighting the way to pronounce words?

I don't understand what you mean. Fonts take time and effort to create, and some creators want to be able to benefit from the financial fruits of their work, with intellectual property and nonfree licenses.

Who created the way we pronounce words? We collectively did, over hundreds of years.

The shape itself is not copyrighted (in the US), only the representation in code is. It's the same concept with pronunciations: the pronunciation itself is not copyrighted, a specific recording of someone saying a word is.

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