Typefaces aren’t meant to be IP in most countries. So to me, companies rent-seeking on fonts is gross
We absolutely should preserve commercial incentive for people to make IP of such importance (both functionally and artistically).
Nothing is stopping people from making nor using free fonts and yet many people and organizations freely choose to spend thousands of dollars on something that they perceive to be "better."
And yeah, it’s great that we happened upon a quasi-religious movement in software that has managed to align itself with commercial interests. OSS, in my opinion, will go down as one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
Want to know why it’s such an achievement? Because it was profoundly unlikely and continues to be difficult in all sorts of ways.
Question: What’s your job and your approximate hourly rate? Is it something that requires years or decades of training and do you charge $0?
Don't like paid fonts? Don't use them.
Don't think they're "meant to be IP" ? Too bad; they are.
Don't think fonts matter ? Use Comic Sans MS the rest of your life, go ahead.
If I develop a website for someone and pay for Oracle, that does not grant free Oracle licenses to everyone I hand my work off to. Why would anyone think that ? s/Oracle/OpenAI/g. s/Oracle/whatever you make money on/g.
Just because one doesn't value the work of font creators doesn't mean the rest of us must commoditize their work.
You might think there are huge networks of font pirates creating even-better fonts than those run-of-the-mill paid fonts, but it's just a fantasy.
This is evidenced by the fact that no one seems willing to clone popular typefaces because making a font is a lot of work even if you have a guide.
I always get angry about "x but on a computer" patents, and the "typefaces ... but on a computer" court case lights a similar fire in my belly.
> This is evidenced by the fact that no one seems willing to clone popular typefaces because making a font is a lot of work even if you have a guide.
The 1,000,000 Helvetica clones out there disagree with this statement
What exactly is copyright law stopping people from doing? It's literally only protecting their work in the font. If they did a lot of work, you can't call selling it "rent-seeking" and surely it's worth protecting and incentivizing. If they did little work, then little is protected. Anybody can use it by doing an even smaller amount of work.