Comments on: When Free Fonts Aren’t Free

By: Родион

Родион — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:20:57 +0000

Действительно, как говорится – Без пользы жить – безвременная смерть.

By: Ethan Dunham

Ethan Dunham — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:24:26 +0000

Wow, that’s funny, I didn’t realize how old this article was. *blush*

By: Ethan Dunham

Ethan Dunham — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:23:00 +0000

In my experience, many of these free font designers just don’t put effort into thinking about the implications of their licenses. I can’t tell you how many decent free fonts are “personal use only” and to use them commercially you have to contact the guy and work out some deal?! Who does that? And there is a pretty large swath of free fonts that have no licenses at all. Not even embedded in the font. That is often because they are old (early 90s) or because the designer doesn’t realize that a font NEEDS a license for conscientious end-users to actually decide to use it.

Our guiding philosphy has been: If the font is old, ubiquitous and unlicensed… treat it like public domain (yes I know). If the font is new and unlicensed, beg the designer to make some statement about it’s use.

Another BIG problem I’ve had: designers update and change their licensing terms over time. We’ve had to drop fonts from our archive because the designer wanted to start selling them, and another changed from commercial-use to personal-only.

Font Squirrel definitely takes some liberty in interpreting licenses when it comes to @font-face. It is a new tehnology and unique in the problems it creates and is rarely included in the EULA.

Anyway, I agree. Font EULAs are a mess.

By: Frank Jonen

Frank Jonen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:54:30 +0000

@Tiffany You’ll see 🙂 just wait 5 to 8 years and look at the market again.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:49:09 +0000

Thank you, Catherine. Actually it is the fonts you have listed under web embed. typegirl (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks, again.

By: Catherine Azzarello

Catherine Azzarello — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:36:17 +0000

No problem, Tiffany! I use FontAgent Pro and keep my font types in libraries (some crossovers) and create sets for clients–which I activate/deactivate per project.

Here’s my library list:
Blackletter
Cyborg (never have used anything here 😉
Flourishes
Foreign Language
Grunge
Handwriting
Monospace
OpenFace
Quirky
Retro
SanSerif
Script Casual
Script Formal
Script Grunge
Serif
Square Serif
Symbols
Unlikely to Use (the equivalent of an attic!)
Web Embed*
Western

*This started small, but is now 180 faces…I may need to subdivide!

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:22:02 +0000

Catherine, I would love to see your lists. Is that something you would share off-list?

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:20:58 +0000

Frank, that is your choice. You can choose who to use and who not to use. But with all due respect, the EULA is not an indicator of when a foundry will go out of business. What the EULA does indicate is the business model of a given foundry and how they view their product. As designers we’re lucky in that there are so many fonts available at so many foundries with different EULAs. So, we can choose which foundry to use. It isn’t like there is only one perfect font for every project.

By: Frank Jonen

Frank Jonen — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:03:51 +0000

These days an EULA is often an indicator of when a foundry will go out of business.
They load their EULAs up with so much indefensible restrictions that at some point you automatically violate the agreement. So either they spend their entire bottom line on frivolous law suits or they try to arrive at least in 2007 maybe.

I use every font I purchase in good faith, IF the foundry lets me purchase it, Font Bureau for example thinks that you’re not good enough for some of their better fonts and won’t sell them to you. Which encourages piracy. Probably works for them marketing wise to not make money because of those restrictions. I have no idea. Could also simply be raging stupidity. Who knows.

Also if you have something in your EULA that restricts my use to 200px tall, you dear foundry, can suck it!

By: Catherine Azzarello

Catherine Azzarello — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:40:09 +0000

I’d love to see some standardization and simplification in EULAs. Having collected hundreds of fonts over the years (thousands if you include weight variations) via software, direct purchase or free download–scanning EULAs is always a pain.

I’ve never worried about improper use for print projects. Either I used fonts that shipped with Adobe or Corel, or I’d purchase fonts (usually MyFonts.com). Most freebies were unsuitable (kerning/lack of glyphs/etc.). But in recent years, the quality and quantity of free fonts has exploded.

Now I have a font library called “web embed”. This is where I put fonts with EULAs that allow use with Cufon or @fontface. (Fontin and Anivers are 2). Bottom line, if I see an offering of free fonts, I quickly scan the EULA for commercial and web notations. If it’s for personal use only, I pass. If it’s vague about web use, it better be a damn good font–but I download it to style library, not web-embed.

It’s not a fool-proof system by any means. But until some sort of standardization, inclusion and simplification of EULAs evolve, it’s the best I can do. I don’t want to short change font designers and I sure don’t want a lawsuit.