[OpenFontLibrary] Commissioned-then-Open Font Model - was: New Ubuntu Font

[Garrick Van Buren]

Dave,

This goes back to our podcast conversation [1] and how font designers can make a living in the world of web fonts.

Yes, ALL font development.

This comes from my experience w/ Kernest these the past 9 months and the observation that the bulk of the software libraries I work with daily - in both a professional & casual capacity - are open sourced. They all originated by either being explicitly commissioned (i.e. make library for me) - or implicitly commissioned (i.e. developed at & for the day job). 

I suspect the bulk of the fonts most people see on computers (the ones that came with their OS) were commissioned by the OS vendor. Most of these are not openly licensed (as you know - many are). I don't know if Matthew Carter still gets paid every time another copy of Windows is sold - but I suspect not. So, I'm not sure what Microsoft would lose by openly licensing Georgia - they've already paid for it. :)

Similarly, as long as my invoices are paid - I don't care how my clients license the work I do for them.

1. http://www.firstcrackpodcast.com/archive/first-crack-125

Is this helpful?

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Garrick Van Buren
612 325 9110
garrick at kernest.com
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Kernest.com
Free and Commercial Web Fonts
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On Mar 5, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Dave Crossland wrote:

> On 5 March 2010 16:32, Garrick Van Buren <garrick at kernest.com> wrote:
>> 
>> commissioned-then-openly-licensed fonts will be the primary model
>> for the majority of font development moving forward.
> 
> Do you mean the majority of ALL font development, or the majority of
> libre font development?