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Comment by smlacy | Hacker News Reader

SF Mono (https://developer.apple.com/fonts/) is also an amazing font, but generally left out of most online comparison tools due to licensing issues. But, it's freely available for personal use, and is certainly worth a look, and has been my preferred fixed width font for quite some time.

SF Mono works great in any system (not just Fruit) but you'll need to use a few tools to dig down to get the OTF's out of the DMG.

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I’m unsure if the license has changed recently but I know that as of a year or two ago you basically had no license to use the font for anything but the system apps that it shipped with. Not that I particularly care much for it, but it’s not really very usable for general use if you want to “stay legit”.

Nope, that is still in the license.

See here (left off most of the agreement as the comment was deemed too long. See https://gist.github.com/bertjwregeer/faedb3d9dbf4b6e6d6ec0fa... for full license)

APPLE INC. LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THE APPLE SF MONO FONT For iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS application uses only

PLEASE READ THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT (“LICENSE”) CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE APPLE SF MONO FONT (DEFINED BELOW). BY USING THE APPLE FONT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. IF YOU ARE ACCESSING THE APPLE FONT ELECTRONICALLY, SIGNIFY YOUR AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE BY CLICKING THE “AGREE” BUTTON. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, DO NOT USE THE APPLE FONT AND CLICK “DISAGREE”.

IMPORTANT NOTE: THE APPLE SF MONO FONT IS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR CREATING MOCK-UPS OF USER INTERFACES TO BE USED IN SOFTWARE PRODUCTS RUNNING ON APPLE’S iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS OR watchOS OPERATING SYSTEMS, AS APPLICABLE.

1. General. A. The Apple font, interfaces, content, data, and other materials accompanying this License, whether on disk, print or electronic documentation, in read only memory, or any other media or in any other form, (collectively, the “Apple Font”) are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Inc. (“Apple”) for use only under the terms of this License. Apple and/or Apple’s licensors retain ownership of the Apple Font itself and reserve all rights not expressly granted to you. The terms of this License will govern any software upgrades provided by Apple that replace and/or supplement the original Apple Font, unless such upgrade is accompanied by a separate license in which case the terms of that license will govern.

B. Title and intellectual property rights in and to any content displayed by or accessed through the Apple Font belongs to the respective content owner. Such content may be protected by copyright or other intellectual property laws and treaties, and may be subject to terms of use of the third party providing such content. This License does not grant you any rights to use such content nor does it guarantee that such content will continue to be available to you.

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. Limited License. Subject to the terms of this License, you may use the Apple Font solely for creating mock-ups of user interfaces to be used in software products running on Apple’s iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS or watchOS operating systems, as applicable. The foregoing right includes the right to show the Apple Font in screen shots, images, mock-ups or other depictions, digital and/or print, of such software products running solely on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS or watchOS. Your use of the Apple Font shall also be subject to any specific use restrictions with respect thereto as set forth in the Apple Font or Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines.

You may use this Apple Font only for the purposes described in this License and only if you are a registered Apple Developer, or as otherwise expressly permitted by Apple in writing.

B. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Font for the purpose of creating mock-ups of user interfaces to be used in software products running on any non-Apple operating system or to enable others to do so. You may not embed the Apple Font in any software programs or other products. Except as expressly provided for herein, you may not use the Apple Font to, create, develop, display or otherwise distribute any documentation, artwork, website content or any other work product.

Except as otherwise expressly permitted by the terms of this License or as otherwise licensed by Apple: (i) only one user may use the Apple Font at a time, and (ii) you may not make the Apple Font available over a network where it could be run or used by multiple computers at the same time. You may not rent, lease, lend, trade, transfer, sell, sublicense or otherwise redistribute the Apple Font in any unauthorized way.

Once a (freely available) file is downloaded onto a computer that I own & control, they don't have any legal right to restrict what I do with those file(s), as long as I don't generate any derivative works. Using the font in a terminal or editor does not constitute a derivative work.

For example, I can use this as my terminal font on my Debian machine, and write code using it, but I can't post a screenshot of that terminal or code to Twitter.

I tested it (very easy to extract the Matryoshka of files with "7z x") and it looks very nice, actually very similar in size (not shape) to Ubuntu Mono. Gives me a feeling of being a tad more "packed", and letters look more "squareish", but nonetheless a very good looking font...

I'll evaluate it over a couple of days. Thanks!

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