if you doubt that fonts could be simpler, look at how simple the formats provided by http://typeface.neocracy.org/ and http://cufon.shoqolate.com/ are, and what results they deliver. there are no arcane binaries, there is no hinting, yet display quality sometimes surpasses that of commercial fonts on the screen. i’ll admit anytime that there is a noticeable distance between these javascript/canvas solutions and what is required for full-fledged typesetting. however, these solutions go all of the 80% of what is needed, and i am confident that adding the remaining 20% (ligatures, kerning &c) is not going to put them anywhere near the incredible technological b.s. and artificial complexity that has gone into fonts.

if you doubt that fonts should be open, look at the gazillions of medium and high quality fonts available right now, right here. designing a good font is both a science and an art, and i want the craftsmen and artists being able to live from it. but building even more DRM into more products—as suggested in the interview of the OT—cannot be the solution.

If the fonts were common to many websites, is there a way they could be cached across all websites if there were served from a common site?

What I don’t want is that first hit. If the font came down just once for all sites, that would be good.

But this argument “while the non-free world does a circle jerk with itself, the free world will be over here making stuff” is the most compelling to me.

And it appears the “new browser wars” are an apt example of this principle, at least in terms of the rendering engines*, and the FOSS selection growing and continually taking away users from the proprietary behemoth.

* Yes, Safari is a proprietary browser, but WebKit is open source, and Safari is increasingly treated as free, in terms of Apple’s attention to public expectations and respect for platform, as well as Apple’s continued improvement in the WebKit open-source project.

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Nosredna,

I think that’s a false problem. Most fonts are around the same size as a good quality photo. Do you expect Google to begin hosting photos as well? A better approach would be to set up caching correctly, and (for the sake of your users, for a variety of reasons) minimize your font selection.

It’d be a lot easier to justify using a font if I knew it could be served via Google’s massive pipes.