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Comment by hannob | Hacker News Reader

I find this misleading.

Today, most fonts in practical use are open source fonts. When someone chooses a font for a web project, they typically pick something from Google fonts, which are all open source licensed. Android, the most common OS, uses open source fonts like Roboto by default which are also open source.

The article does not mention open source at all, it has one mention of Google Fonts which is kinda misleading ("the latter of which gives away fonts for free" - well, not really, many of these fonts are not from google and were already free, google is just providing a font hosting service).

An accurate statement would be one company dominates the proprietary font market, which is however only a small share of overall font use.

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This is not true. We would have to define "practical use" but if you are looking at most used typefaces - things people see in around them the most it is dominated by commercial typefaces. It will be Helveticas, Arials, Times New Romans of the world. What people use in Word and Windows - all proprietary typefaces. Anything Apple - proprietary. Anything branded - brands usually typeface and that typeface is going to be proprietary - even on web.

Only platform that uses open-source typeface is Android with roboto/noto. If you are looking at webapps not marketing sites then yes you might get lot of Inter but trend is moving towards using system-ui font stack which is proprietary (except linux/android).

So no open-source typefaces are definitely not most used in practical use. Btw majority of the super popular ones are owned by Monotype the company this article is about.

> things people see in around them the most it is dominated by commercial typefaces

I agree, but I think that says more about how the market for OS-software evolved (with the assumption that the OS should provide core fonts "for free") as opposed to an indication of monopoly or lock-in.

The average person probably doesn't notice (nor care) about the subtle differences between those major (OS-company supplied) fonts versus open-source equivalents or their competitors' proprietary ones.

Do you know anyone who works in design?

I do.

And quite franky, all of them would laugh in your face if you told them that fonts are something that ought to be provided "for free". Fonts come from designers, designers work hard and should be paid for their work. Accordingly, real professional designers pay for fonts -- by the hundreds or thousands, sometimes, so many fonts their computers slow down if they don't use special software to manage them all.

This is also why the strongest, healthiest software ecosystem exists on macOS. Because macOS still has that cultural creative core of its user base, a culture which believes that people who create things should be paid for their efforts. Accordingly, you can still release a commercial proprietary program on macOS and expect to make significant money -- even from a small user base. That's certainly not true on Linux and it increasingly isn't true on Windows -- except, maybe, for gaming.

As for the average person, we're not even talking about the digital world. Everything in print, everything written on television, uses fonts. And if they employ professional designers, those are going to be commercial fonts. The real deal, the ones that were first set in hot type by Swiss or Austrian guys a hundred years ago or more. Open source substitutes are no substitute at all.

> This is also why the strongest, healthiest software ecosystem exists on macOS.

What do you mean by "strongest" and "healthiest"?

In my experience, most software is very cross-platform these days, and most platform-exclusive software is Windows-only.

Internet trolls work hard and they deserve to be paid for their work.

> [designers] would laugh in your face if you told them that fonts are something that ought to be provided "for free"

That's a big *whoosh* or else you just felt like attacking a strawman.

Like I already said, I'm referring to how all major operating systems (including desktop Linux distros) bundle dozens of fonts to cover common needs. No average consumer is expected to spend additional money gaining the ability to see Greek math symbols or pseudo-handwriting or whatever.

It isn't the 1990s where you might see a retail-display box for Microsoft Windows 3.x adjacent to Microsoft TrueType Font Pack for Windows and Adobe Type Basics.

Similarly, disk-defragmentation tools are now in there "for free", and a TCP/IP stack is there "for free", etc.

Well yes, but in era of reproducible science, we need fonts which can be reproduced by the people who recompile the scientific data and regenerate the reports. Proprietary fonts are kind of a bottleneck in that respect.

The graphic designers I know all own a personal library of expensive fonts they’ve purchased over the years. Fonts being good matters a lot more than them being free

In era of reproducible science, fonts being reproducible by people matters a lot more. And free fonts can be very good as well.

The ACM revamped their article templates in 2017 and adopted open source fonts.

Really good free fonts are as rare as unicorns. One can spot good fonts by looking at the kerning, and most if not all free fonts suck at kerning, including Google Fonts.

I think your comment is misleading. Most fonts in use on the web today are actually proprietary and not open source. https://jichu4n.com/posts/the-most-popular-fonts-on-the-web-... -- Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia, Helvetica are all proprietary.

Proprietary, but also free because they are bundled with our OS.

The topic at hand is fonts you have to buy a license to use from Monotype, and fonts you can use freely.

> Today, most fonts in practical use are open source fonts. When someone chooses a font for a web project,

I think you've got your HN blinders on. There are two types of projects: Projects where the font doesn't matter, and projects where the font is proprietary. Proprietary fonts utterly dominate the market whenever there's a paid graphic designer involved.

You seem to think all open-source fonts' graphic designers worked for free, which is as laughable as saying there is no money in open-source software development.

Most fonts in wide use are likely contract work, whatever license ends up being used for their distribution.

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