Why Should Fonts Be Like Wikipedia?
Peter Nermander recently commented on the Scribus mailing list: “I wish fonts would be licensed the same way for example photographs.”
I disagree strongly about this. Fonts are functional software, and photos are typically decorative artwork, so they are not similar and ought not be treated similarly. Fonts ought to be like Wikipedia, “free as in freedom.”
I believe that since fonts are software, and since type designs are functional - a type design you can’t read with is non-functional - then they ought to be free in the same way as program software is, and functional information like encyclopedias is too.
There are several common criticisms of my position.
First, there is the basis of Peter’s comment, that “glyphs are art” and so type designs and font software ought to be treated like works of art. Scribus developer Andreas rightfully pointed out that “photos take only seconds or minutes to produce, while fonts take months or years.” But complex programs, encyclopedias with 10,000 high quality “core” articles and national street maps also take years to produce, so this is not a good reason why Peter is mistaken.
This reasoning is at best a misunderstanding of design as art, and at worse a sneaky way for proprietary software developers to justify DRM.
The second argument is that, if type is functional, and its function is to read written language, why do we need more than one typeface? Andreas wrote, “If function is all that matters, noone would need more than Courier/Times/Helvetica surely? Those are quite readable.”
Including several type designs in the list is a diluted form of the argument compared to “more than one?” because it already indicates that a variety of type designs are needed.
A variety are needed because while the ability to read words is the primary function of a type design, that is not the only functional aspect.
The software freedom movement needs many more fonts than those three - just as many as existing as proprietary software - because there are many secondary aspects of type designs that have a massive effect on how well they function.
There are also many tertiary aspects, about how type designs are implemented in software, too.
For example: Helvetica is a great type design for signage and large scale use, but it not intended for reading paragraphs of text at 10pt, and if its font isn’t hinted well, it will work very poorly at small sizes. Other sans serif type designs are intended for reading long texts with, and can be well hinted to function on screen as well as on paper.
The third argument is about money. This often comes with many assumptions that need to be examined - must type design be done as a business? Is a business in free information impossible? Or at least to make profit? Or to get rich? - and Andreas’ suggestion is typical of this: “A font designer has the right to profit from his/her work, and as long as one needs money for living, the font designer should decide how to pay for the use of his/her work.”
Richard Stallman was dealing with this kind of thing literally before I was born, and so I’ll parody his manifesto:
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a type designer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts an implicit assumption: that without total control of the use of font software, type designers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason type designers will not starve making free software fonts is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for type design and font development.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably type design will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If type designers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
There are plenty of ways that type designers could make a living without selling various ways of using fonts. This way is customary now because it brings type designers and publishers the most money, not because it is the only way for them to make a living. It is easy to find other ways if you want to find them.
Here are a number of real world examples of free font software being paid for:
- A type designer finds 1 person who wants a font exclusively, and they pay 100% of the development cost (including a profit margin)
- A type designer finds 2 people who want a similar font unexclusively, and they pay 2/3rd of the cost each, leaving 1/3rd profit margin.
- A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of fonts onto the new hardware.
- An OS developer introducing a new OS will pay for the porting of fonts onto the new text layout engine.
- A lingusitics organization employs type designers to enable the organization to promote literacy in very poor areas of the world.
- The sale of teaching services also employs type designers.
I’m not sure that anyone has a right to profit, because if someone with a better business model starts their business, they ought to drive that person into bankruptcy.
There is nothing wrong about doing business and making profit and making a living, as long as that business isn’t socially harmful; many kinds of businesses are illegal, many more are socially frowned upon.
Proprietary software is socially harmful. I think I may have a better business model for making fonts than the proprietary guys; I’m certain I have a business model that can be profitable for me, and co-exist with them. Afterall, the only OS developers who have survived Microsoft, other than free software developers, are Apple.
The Why Should Fonts Be Like Wikipedia? by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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8 Responses to “Why Should Fonts Be Like Wikipedia?”
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How is Apple owned by Microsoft?
Didn’t they buy like 40% shares back in the day?
The current investment is, as far as I know, close to zero. The original documented investment was for $150m of non-voting stock, which was later converted. However, there are rumours that the full amount paid by Microsoft to Apple was somewhat higher, allegedly to reflect the imbalance of IP involved in the patent settlement. (Included in the deal in 1997 was a cross-licensing agreement.) The whole thing is subject to a lot of rumour - for an example, see the article and the comments, complete with requisite bile, at http://justinhartman.com/2007/11/23/microsofts-equity-in-apple - but the upshot is that Microsoft probably owned one or two percent of Apple back in 1997 and sold it some five or six years later.
My guess it that Jobs, on returning to Apple and then becoming temporary CEO, thought that Microsoft’s investment of a token amount would seem like an important vote of confidence, signalling to the market an end to those disastrous lawsuits. It seemed to do the trick.
I seem to remember reading that Jobs, while CEO of NeXT, helped Microsoft defend itself against an earlier lawsuit that Apple subsequently lost.
Cool - thanks, I’ve updated the post. (It used to say Microsoft owned Apple, which is clearly false) Any comments on the actual post though? :-)
Saying that “photos take only seconds or minutes to produce, while fonts take months or years” is a patronising and simplistic way of making a value judgement about these respective activities. It says nothing about how the products of these activities should be licensed.
It is as valid to say that fonts should be licensed like photos, as it is to say that fonts should be licensed like wikipedia; ie, not valid either way.
This desperation to find a suitable analogy so fonts can fit into the world of free content and software has yielded nothing except the need to recognise that fonts present a unique problem. Fonts aren’t wholly like photos, nor are they like wikipedia. If they were, they would be those things. Fonts are like fonts and the problem that presents for licensing is unique to that realm.
Photos are typically decorative works, but can sometimes be functional, and in that case being able to edit them is important - in the same way that it is important for software, encyclopedias, and typeface designs to be changed by their users.
Type designs do not present a unique problem; in what way are they unique? :-)
Another good post on the Scribus list on this thread: “You seem to be implying that photos are therefore easy to make and good photos are not really all that valuable as they took so little time to produce. If that’s not what you meant, my apologies but that’s the way it sounded to me. It’s a common enough assumption but it’s fairly disingenuous. Would you say someone running a 100 meter dash in 9 seconds would not be an amazing feat because it only took him 9 seconds. A good photographer spends a lot of time honing his or her skill and it’s the whole package that is going into pricing. Just because each individual photograph doesn’t take a long time to produce doesn’t mean anyone could produce it (in that or any amount of time). Just sticking up for photographers.”
Good old James :-)