- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 11:36:40 -0500
- To: Tal Leming <tal@typesupply.com>
- Cc: John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com>, Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>, www-font <www-font@w3.org>
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Tal Leming<tal@typesupply.com> wrote: > On Jul 8, 2009, at 11:45 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote: >> Note, though, that Hudson was talking about people who *commissioned* >> fonts for their own use, rather than just ones who bought a license on >> an existing font. The latter situation is actually more >> understandable, from a "well if I have to pay for it, you should too" >> eye-for-an-eye perspective. Having a font commissioned, though, is >> something different. > > How? Before commissioning a font, it doesn't exist. Time and skill has to be spent to create it. It thus makes sense that commissioning a font should cost money - you're paying for a scarce good (the act of creation). The font itself, though, is an infinite good. It can be perfectly mass-copied for free. Sharing it doesn't require any effort at all, unlike commissioning it. My point is then that, since paying to commission a font is natural, you shouldn't get any weird 'fairness' feelings making you think that other people should morally pay as well to receive it. On the other hand, since having to pay for a copy of a font is a fundamentally odd thing, it can understandably produce "misery loves company" feelings. ~TJ
Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 16:37:40 UTC