In https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/124475/ (go back to sans-serif) Legoktm claims "There was a consensus that listing only non-free fonts was not acceptable", that's not my recollection. Was a bug ever filed?
Kaldari valiantly tried to put non-free fonts first, that caused bug 63512. Now as I understand it, we're back to: * Mac users get Helvetica Neue * Windows users get Arial unless they have Helvetica Neue (unlikely) or Helvetica (I can't reproduce bug 63662) * Linux users get whatever F/OSS font fontconfig supplies for the well-known string "Helvetica", I get Nimbus Sans L * Android users ?? (Nobody responded.)
quoting Isarra Yos
Given that no objective and verifiable issues with this were ever provided ... Why? All this effort, and for what?
BECAUSE DESIGN. (I begged and pleaded with the talented designers who work next to me to put something emphatic in the Typography refresh FAQ.) It's a better design. It makes MediaWiki web sites look better for millions of our users by mentioning proprietary fonts that 90+% of them have. That's not "objective and verifiable", it just is. Is it worth mentioning non-free fonts? People disagree. But I'm saddened by the implicit and overt hostility towards the art of design here ("its debatable whether this actually represents "progress"", "it seems like things have shifted more to managers at WMF make the decisions", etc.).
Regards,