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Comment by branon | Hacker News Reader

Calibri is Microsoft-encumbered, no? Shame they didn't use a free font like Liberation Sans.

What you see as "Microsoft-encumbered," they may see as "default font in Outlook so just go with the font that'll get used anyway."

Liberation Sans would be so on brand for the USA too

Mot à mot translation: "Liberation Without" or "Liberation Lacking"

Arguably this fits even better.

You know that feeling you get when something is just so perfect?

Frisson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson

Not for the bureaucrats at the state department.

The Microsoft empire is bigger than several nation states.

IBM research used to examine UX. The IBM top brass deciding to pay over $35B+ for a UNIX-like when they have an authentic UNIX of their very own which is going to a boneyard in India suggests that kind of UX research isn't front of mind and funded to decide which font is best.

Buying Red Hat was just to acquire customers . Generally if you don’t really want the product the business / tech then you acquire patents , customers and people. For patents you can sue other competitors.

What does AIX have to do with this? It wasn't exactly at the forefront of UX research even before Red Hat existed at all.

They'd have to install that font to every machine, and Calibri is already there.

There are libre fonts with the same metrics as Calibri. Ditto with Arial and Times.

Are they (or any other libre font) on every Windows/Office by default?

No, but they are good for interoperability on standard documents so the layout doesn't get lost.

Eh, better to name the free fonts something that doesn't give an "I can't afford the name brand" vibe. Nothing about freedom even needs to be in the name. To most people, all fonts are already free cause they cost nothing.

Microsoft is a domestic company. That's probably a plus for vendor selection.

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