Operating Systems > macOS
Still the official OS of design
worker201:
It sorta sounds like you guys are saying that it's okay for Microsoft to do the things it does when they're doing them to something you dislike, but it's not okay when they're doing them to something you do like. Microsoft's treatment of Helvetica is no different than their treatment of Netscape. Either this behavior is okay or it isn't okay - make up your minds.
Refalm:
Most Linux distributions also have some great fonts:
So I don't think Microsoft's copy of Helvetica is bad. The open source world basically does the same, because it saves money on font licenses.
worker201:
--- Quote from: Refalm on 8 April 2010, 22:12 ---Most Linux distributions also have some great fonts:
So I don't think Microsoft's copy of Helvetica is bad. The open source world basically does the same, because it saves money on font licenses.
--- End quote ---
Illegally hotlinked image is not viewable.
Of course, I don't know for sure, but here's my theory about the questions being asked:
Linux: "What sans-serif fonts can we include in our distro without compromising our GPL license?"
Windows: "How can we manufacture a font for ourselves that looks like Helvetica without getting sued?"
Mac: "What fonts do we need to include in our OS in order to appeal to professional designers?"
Preference for one font over another is irrelevant to the discussion, in my opinion.
piratePenguin:
Or Microsoft: "Helvitica will cost us money we don't need to spend, raise the price of the OS, and perhaps most critically give another company a chance to create an unnecessary problem when they dominate, and we need to pay whatever they ask for the license". Did anybody think of that?
This is why we don't want H.264 to dominate the web people. IT WILL FUCK THIS SHIT UP.
aside:: In the case of h264 the people behind it (*cough* the licensing authority) offered a free patent license to firefox covering all the patents, FOR 5 YEARS (couldve been 10, not sure of the length, but thats not the point). Why do you think they did this? COULD THEY HAVE DECIDED TO BE COMMUNISTS?? It happens that the licensing costs, even before a monopoly has been created, were prohibitive for Firefox - they required 10s or 100s of millions (since firefox has such a large number of users in the region of 300m+ this is), figures that Google and Apple can afford, but not cheap little firefox. Now, if you cant see the problem with accepting those terms where the agreement ends in a fixed time, I will find you and kick you in the balls.
Also Firefox support would be instrumental in their plan to *cough*gonna be careful here*/cough* "gain marketshare", but perhaps that wont be necessary, since Google and Apple have paid that license and are supporting h264 (as far as I know google also excludes ogg (there is a reason for this, that webbrowsers shouldnt support an ammalgenation of codecs so google is h264 exclusive whilst firefox and opera are "doing the right thing" and are ogg exclusive afaik, apple supports video in any format Quicktime supports i think)) (and google have a h264 version of youtube, which is a kick in the teeth. However they also purchased on2 who have created perhaps a better codec than h264, but we dont know what google will do with it (the fsf wrote an open letter inviting google to license the on2 codec freely, this is possibly something we need)). Microsoft has either paid the license (I expect), going to pay it, or going to fight it with WMV and their control of IE, now at least that would be fucking hilarious.
(this is pretty confusing and most of my info burried deep in my memory atm, apologies)
Now, bringing this all back to the topic, if the helvetica owners provided a license to MS at a fixed fee, or a fixed small fee per user, perhaps that would be acceptable, if the contract lasts forever. There is probably a history here and perhaps this was offered, but I wouldn't critisise MSes choice to avoid a dependence on another company without that information. Unless, of course, the company is communist 8)
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