<quote name="Steven Walling" date="2014-03-10" time="16:19:04 +0000">
But who will we possibly be promoting non-free fonts to? End users, who already bought and paid for them? Developers, who should know how CSS works?
You're not demonstrating real harm here. We rely on free software for MediaWiki/Wikimedia because we must. Because otherwise we can't fulfill our mission. How does this, in the short or long run, demonstrably impair our ability to fulfill our mission?
The harm is promoting a nonFree font in our CSS. Full stop. It's that simple.
...that only benefits Apple OS users.
Let's be clear on that point, please.
That is not true at all. Again, you're completely ignoring almost the entirety of the typography refresh except for this one line of CSS, including the fact that it means that our mobile and desktop interfaces will have a single consistent reading experience. As you said, "I haven't sat down and really studied the difference" between the beta feature and the current settings.
As I said in a previous email, those are great changes and I bet their useful and (I'll continue with) they should probably be pushed out regardless of the font stack question. Separate the nonFree font part from the other changes and I bet there'd be a lot less push back.
Unless, of course, those other choices were made under the assumption that the font is Helvetica Neue, which it won't be for the majority of our users, no matter the CSS rules.
Greg