<quote name="Jon Robson" date="2014-03-10" time="09:22:56 -0700">
To take the definition of the CSS font-family property " This property specifies a prioritized list of font family names or generic family names" [1].
Thus if this change puts a free font first we are thus saying "supporting free fonts is our priority". I'm not sure any other big sites do this and I think that in itself is a big fricking deal.
I think regardless of install base and bugs in that free font we send out a message that might give a lot of attention to free fonts and be a positive thing for FOSS in general. The font might be downloaded more and that font might be packaged in OS installs as a result of this.
Restricting ourselves to only free fonts seems like cutting your nose off to spite your face. As Steven points out we have to think about the world we live in and that we want our content to be as readable as possible (as we want to imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the *sum* of all knowledge and to share it helping them read it plays a big part).
I just want the conversation to be more honest about who's benefiting here.
There's a lot of changes in Typography Refresh. One of the many is the font css rule. The majority are changes that do not implicate the Freeness of anything. The font does. The font change (originally) only had a benefit to Mac OS users (right?). Now the font change (after Ryan's amazing work, which should have been done at the beginning) it includes a benefit for people who will now get Liberation instead of DejaVu (right?).
So, if my two (right?)'s above are correct, that makes me feel like the design team only cared about OSX/iOS users before, and only after a LOT of complaining on the various lists and bugs and such did they put in the effort to see IF they could improve the experience for non-Apple products. I find it also corroborated by the request from a Design team member for access to a Windows computer to do testing on *last week*.
That may or may not be an accurate way to describe the situation, historically, but that's how the narrative can easily be interpreted and it is what I'm feeling from these discussions where I'm being told my preference for not promoting proprietary stuff is "irrational."
Greg