It came out in a meeting about icons, that a major impetus of Wikifont was the workflow for designers being easier if all icons are sourced from a single font file, and not individual SVG files. The SVG-to-font workflow is helpful for the iOS app which uses the font (apparently the Android app does not). The font-to-SVG workflow was an idea to try and make it possible for designers to use their "font is the source" workflow.
I personally believe that being a designer at Wikimedia should mean working with open formats (SVG, CSS, HTML), checking assets into git repositories, and seeking to make community contribution easier, not more difficult. The idea that a font file, which is a big blob of binary data, be the official source of all icons just doesn't scale, and makes contribution much more difficult.
In the meeting we seemed to agree that it was worth developing further the tools to have more features and an easier workflow when working with SVG (with PNG fallbacks). Work is already underway to achieve this, and I am looking forward to us having an easy to use, easy to contribute to and well performing system for designing, refining and delivering icons.
- Trevor