[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Thomas Phinney and Libre Fonts plus Font Quality continued

[vernon adams]

Of course, there is no theoretical reason, and no-one has actually said that there should be a reason. The only good reasons i could cite, if i was debating this issue, is that often fonts from from the ‘libre worlds’ are developed within a very different framework to fonts developed in the traditional commercial / proprietary worlds. So, software from the libre world is often developed within a ‘release early’ or ‘open development’ framework. In my own experience, fonts i have published have been initially published only after just a few weeks development time; then the more usage they attract the more time i put into refining and improving them. If anyone thinks that’s not a good idea, i don’t care :) because i am pretty secure in my reasons for developing fonts in this way.

But, I think my main unhappiness with the now usual criticisms against these fonts in question (and no-one ever names them!?) is that there seems to be an assumption that if a Libre font lacks a certain ‘quality’ then it represents some kind of ‘font industry problem’ that needs to be adressed by a range of measures, from some kind of "educating the public" to recognise and disregard these fonts, to some kind of ‘naming and shaming’ of individual designers. I can’t see any mileage in those sort of responses; the complainers just look at best out of touch, at worst, mean-spirited.

-v



On 28 Oct 2013, at 08:58, Thomas Phinney <tphinney at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Quality, creativity, libre license.... There is no theoretical reason you can't have all of these things with a single typeface, even if there may be dynamics in play that tend to make creativity and libre licensing correlate negatively with quality, on average.