[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Tom Phinney on Libre Fonts

[Vernon Adams]

On 17 Oct 2013, at 02:39, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 01:15:44AM -0700, Vernon Adams wrote:
>> Pablo clearly 'gets it' :)
>> 
>> I assume that the response from people who "dont get it" would be that
>> you should have both; 'freedom' and 'quality', and i wouldn't argue
>> with that, it's a good target. But...
> 
> We should. I find the praising of bad quality fonts very troubling and
> denigrating to the free software movement. Free software has always been
> about freedom, true, but also it always strived for the for the highest
> standards, and we should do the same in libre fonts, not justify doing
> lousy jobs because it is more “ground breaking” because that is a false
> dichotomy.

Khaled,
On the designers side of things i don't know what 'praising of bad quality fonts' might be, so i don't know what you might be referring to. Maybe you are getting the wrong end of the stick? :)

I think you have described below, the way free software has generally approached output. 'Early and often' is by it's nature, accepting that 'quality' is a moveable bar at the release stage. I've used free software long enough to have heard all the old arguments of why 'early and often' is a 'threat to quality' and therefore 'bad for users', etc, etc. Through those 20+ years though adoption of free software methods has ballooned, and the world is still spinning :)

-v

> 
> I’m a big fan of incremental improvements; “release early, release
> often”, and I had released very defective fonts (to my standard) because
> I believe in user participation of improving the quality (and people did
> participate, though not by actual hacking on the fonts), but that has
> always been an interim measure not a goal, and such releases are
> usually accompanied with big warnings so that people know what they are
> getting into.
> 
> Regards,
> Khaled