Comment by humanistbot
3 years ago
> Berkeley Mono wears a UNIX T-shirt and aspires to be etched on control panels in black synthetic lacquer. It is Adrian Frutiger visits Bell Labs. It is Gene Kranz's command. It operates with calibrated precision and has a datasheet.
It costs $75 for an individual license, not really in the spirit of UNIX
One of the strongest indicators that FOSS has eaten the world is that we've all forgotten that UNIX licenses used to be thousands of dollars.
And that's before you even bought the compiler license!
I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard that the AT&T-initiated compiler “debundling” was the thing that kick-started the popularity of the GNU userland, with GCC acting as the gateway drug. So not only are these facts related, they are apparently even causally so.
UNIX was an internal and then commercial product of ATT bell labs (and later Novell). You're misconstruing it with the FOSS movement.
UNIX was created for ATT to sell more telephone service, and then later sold and licensed to other companies to likewise improve their internal computer usage. UNIX was not created to be zero cost. Apparently a commercial license for UNIX cost $20k at the time (or $150 for universities/educational institutions).
edit: IMHO $75 one time is a fair price for a premium font. Designers regularly pay $300 or more for typefaces they use in their work. There are monthly subscriptions to font foundries that cost more too.
The historical origin that I learned for UNIX was that it was created mostly out of frustration with Multics, and that its original "primary" use was running one of Ken Thompson's video games[1]. It was originally written for a PDP-7, which was already obsolete at the time and probably wasn't a target for telecommunications software.
It was only much later (and after significant arm twisting for more computing resources) that AT&T took UNIX seriously. Even then, the first marketed versions of UNIX were oriented towards programmers and technical editors, not telecommunication[2].
[1]: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.pdf
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PWB/UNIX
It was certainly not created to sell more telephone service. It was a research project that found applications to run on it, most of which had little if anything to do with telephone service at first. Much later UNIX was adapted to run telephone network equipment.
Bell labs was doing research for AT&T, a telephone service company.
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UNIX was created for ATT to sell more telephone service
From where did you get this idea? Citation needed.
AT&T was in the business of selling telephone service. Bell labs (AT&T owned) was where UNIX was created. Why else would AT&T be researching computer systems if not to broaden and improve their marketshare in telecommunications?
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Big if true! Acoustic coupler modems had only existed for a few years when Unix development started, and ARPANET was starting around the same time. It would be an impressive amount of foresight if they predicted that demand for computer networking would become high and that existing OS's would be somehow ill-suited for running its infrastructure.
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> It costs $75 for an individual license, not really in the spirit of UNIX
Eh, I think it’s a fair price, a. And b, pretty apt when you consider most Unixes were priced per core. BSD/OS itself was $1000 back in the day, according to my research, which was cheaper than System V, but obviously still expensive.
Linux was created for a reason.
And here I’ll refrain from making a snarky remark about how someone should make a similar font that is lower quality but will be way more popular.
Really? In Ye Olde Dayes, there was some pretty pricey Unix software.
I remember the days of $800/cpu for a System V R2 license with no outline fonts :)
Heck, I remember OpenStep costing around $700 back in the 90’s.
Yeah, every time a typeface is shared on here it is met with some opposition since most cost money for individuals/personal use. I understand it's hard to take the time to design a nice typeface and that the creators should be compensated for their work, but sadly it means fonts like these are practically limited to commercial use. I wonder if there's a better way to turn a profit on typefaces - there's been a handful of really interesting ones posted on HN I've wanted to try.
There is a ton of entitlement nowadays, that's for sure.
One should be grateful to those who do release their hard work to the public domain or under a FOSS license, rather than being resentful toward those who don't.
People absolutely deserve to be compensated for their work, if they so choose, and they are absolutely permitted to release their work under any license they want.
I think the problem is more that the costs feel exorbitant with respect to both the perceived effort and utility. 75$ is half a year of Netflix - a product clearly born of extensive multi-disciplinary effort - which can't but feel excessive given that the marginal utility of a font is just so low.
I guess I could summarize as saying that an expensive[0] font just isn't, or more strongly, can't be interesting.[1]
[0]More than a cup of coffee, or so. [1]For personal use, marginal benefits scale differently on e.g. a billboard
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You might be interested in futurefonts.xyz. Kind of like Kickstarter for fonts. You pay for typefaces in development. Price goes up as more features and components get added but you get everything that’s included when you buy it and then everything that’s added afterward for no additional cost.
One downside of futurefonts.xyz is that each font comes with a different license. Bit of a headache to keep track of the individual Terms & Conditions as a typical user who might want to use a couple of fonts in a project. Really wish that fonts were sold under more standardized commercial licenses.
At least with many open & free fonts, the SIL Open Font License is practically the standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_Open_Font_License
Not to pile on, but I will say, for the record that it's UNIX® :)
uhh, unix was insanely expensive.