What's so fucked up is that there's no intellectual property protection for typefaces
Isn't that the way it should be in general? Nobody is allowed to copy specifically your program or font but they can copy the idea, invest in the effort, and come up with a similar one, often worse but sometimes better, themselves.
With the following paragraphs of your post I agree fully. As soon as something becomes so ubiquitous as Helvetica, it should fall in public domain. (Or someone should pay for it and give it to everyone else.) Helvetica is so beautiful, timeless, that it would deserve to be free.
Sorry about that, the introductory paragraph became unclear when I rearranged things.
We fully agree, I think it's awesome that typefaces are not IP — what I find fucked up is the present situation where everyone tiptoes around that fact and kowtows to the foundries, because anything less would be an affront to typography itself (ala 'hating the troops').
Upstart type nerds everywhere could legally be crafting better-implemented versions of Helvetica — but they aren't, because other type-nerds would beat them up for paying such an insult to the $300m corporation that owns the name.
> Isn't that the way it should be in general? Nobody is allowed to copy specifically your program or font but they can copy the idea, invest in the effort, and come up with a similar one, often worse but sometimes better, themselves.
Yes, but they aren't allowed to distribute your program just by grepping your name out. You can basically do that with a font AFAIK.
Isn't that the way it should be in general? Nobody is allowed to copy specifically your program or font but they can copy the idea, invest in the effort, and come up with a similar one, often worse but sometimes better, themselves.
With the following paragraphs of your post I agree fully. As soon as something becomes so ubiquitous as Helvetica, it should fall in public domain. (Or someone should pay for it and give it to everyone else.) Helvetica is so beautiful, timeless, that it would deserve to be free.