Font Packs

[Andy05]

3 minutes ago, uneMule said:

As for the links I have given above, no question to ask, these are sites of official founders and that I know for a long time.

Yes, the links you provided are very legit, no problems with those at all. I just tried to make people aware of the risks using "free fonts" in commercial projects—even if there's something like "free for commercial use" mentioned somewhere on a website.

[MikeW]

8 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Well, a friend of mine is an attorney specialised in copyright. He's making money because of people don't know about what the licenses are covering. "Free fonts/images" are a goldmine for copyright trolling, believe me. As the vast majority of users of such free stuff usually don't care for licenses at all. I can only advise everyone to read the licenses of those free materials used in commercial projects. It's less lately, but I even found fonts on "reliable free font pages", which were original Mototype or ITC fonts which just got uploaded by some random users. Illegally, yes. Yet you could be held responsible for using them.

The Adobe license for desktop publishing explicitly permitted  embedding fonts as a subset with only the glyphs needed for the document when I last used Adobe's fonts (it's a while ago, I have to admit).

No one, at least myself and others here, have said to not read and understand a font license. That also applies to understanding a font's provenance, too,

You mention that the vast majority of users of such free stuff usually don't care for licenses at all but I can tell you that same advice applies to many/most users that purchase licenses as well.

Well, your friend may be an attorney specializing in copyright, but perhaps you are not--neither am I--so the dispensing of "legal" advice isn't a good idea. What I am is a font author and font licensing is a mine field for us even with the aid of an attorney. Which is why Google Fonts and those from Font Squirrel are considered the safest to use among the free sites. 

[Fritz_H]

..talking about "Google Fonts" ( fonts.google.com )

As far as I have seen, they do not offer the OpenType/OTF-Version of the fonts any more.

To get it, I click "About" at the selected font to get the location of the source - mostly Github.
On Github I click on the green button called "Clone or download" to transfer the whole package to my computer.
Then I unzip the package, search for the OTF-Files and trash everything else.

Suggestions for a more convenient method are very welcome.

[MikeW]

Most are usually just TrueType outlines with OpenType features. Which means other that the type of curves used in drawing the glyphs, they are OpenType fonts.

This is the same as many/most/all operating system fonts.

[Andy05]

4 hours ago, MikeW said:

No one, at least myself and others here, have said to not read and understand a font license. [...]

Ok, you're right. Wait! What?

On 6/9/2020 at 7:13 PM, Mithferion said:

The Licensing allows for commercial work. Many of those Fonts are made by professional studios and designers.

Best regards!

No, you're actually not right. As the fonts he referred to are NOT allowed for ALL commercial works. But people still think like that.

And I'm not sure if latter part is true either. I doubt that most free fonts (which Mithferion seemed to refer to) are made by "studios". I can agree with designers, but that's a widely overused term anyways. I've seen quite a lot of "designers", who basically just ripped off copyrighted fonts, edited some corners and nodes here and there and post it as a "free font" on one of those websites.

5 hours ago, MikeW said:

Which is why Google Fonts and those from Font Squirrel are considered the safest to use among the free sites. 

Of course they are–and no-one denied that. But if you'd have read the comments, you might have noticed that there was a link posted  to a thread in these fora, which also points at other free pages (like dafont), which are way less safe than the one you've mentioned.

I haven't given any specific legal advise. As you guessed correctly, I'm not a lawyer. But I seriously dislike this naive "it's free and they say it's ok to use"-attitude which is pretty common (yet still wrong and could cause trouble in case of commercial use). I'm just trying to make people think twice about it. Not only when using free fonts but also for bought ones. That's all. After all, if someone wants to use a free font for commercial projects and suddenly gets charged for copyright infringements, it's not my problem.

Yet it appears kinda weird to me, that you–as a font designer–are either not aware of the problem yourself or you simply don't care about other's being not aware of it.

[MikeW]

13 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

... Yet it appears kinda weird to me, that you–as a font designer–are either not aware of the problem yourself or you simply don't care about other's being not aware of it.

You are taking me out of context. If you wish to bother with finding the posts, you will find me calling out the posting of copyrighted fonts and/or fonts that are merely rip offs of same.

But, other than a feeble attempt here to correct some of your misconceptions about certain aspects, I am not a font policeman. 

I'll leave the thread now. Good luck.

[Mithferion]

14 hours ago, Andy05 said:

No, you're actually not right. As the fonts he referred to are NOT allowed for ALL commercial works. But people still think like that.

On the Topic that I made, I also warned:

• They can be used in commercial projects (some restrictions may vary from Font to Font, so be sure to read first).

Also, not ALL paid Typefaces allow ALL commercial use. Font Licensing is some of the most tedious and painful things to check before doing anything.

 

14 hours ago, Andy05 said:

And I'm not sure if latter part is true either. I doubt that most free fonts (which Mithferion seemed to refer to) are made by "studios".

I didn't said "most", I said "many". In recent years, some studios and professional designers have been paid to product Open Source Fonts, or they offer them themselves. Examples of this are Ubuntu, Hind, Source Sans Pro, Hind, Anonymous Pro, Fira Sans, IBM Plex, among others.

 

14 hours ago, Andy05 said:

I've seen quite a lot of "designers", who basically just ripped off copyrighted fonts, edited some corners and nodes here and there and post it as a "free font" on one of those websites.

Well, outlines can't be pattented, only the names, that's why you can make your own "Futura" (a Geometric Sans Serif), but you have to pay if you want to market it like "Mithferion Futura".

Best regards!