Comment by readbeard
18 hours ago
Part of the problem is that Monotype has a bit of a monopoly in the upper segment of the market though right? I know they're not the only players, but it feels like they've vacuumed up enough small, successful foundries that they now control enough of the market that they can get away with the kind of aggressive behavior that wouldn't be tenable in a healthier, more competitive marketplace.
From Wikipedia [0]
> Via acquisitions including Linotype GmbH, International Typeface Corporation, Bitstream, FontShop, URW, Hoefler & Co., Fontsmith, Fontworks [ja] and Colophon Foundry, the company has gained the rights to major font families including Helvetica, ITC Franklin Gothic, Optima, ITC Avant Garde, Palatino, FF DIN and Gotham. It also owns MyFonts, used by many independent font design studios.[3] The company is owned by HGGC, a private equity firm.
For those less familiar with them, those are BIG names, and the acquisition of them could perhaps aptly be compared, for instance, to Disney's acquisitions of properties like Lucasfilm and Marvel.
Serious question: who cares? There is no scarcity of high quality fonts (there are more of them available to ordinary people today than at any point in history). So they control Hoefler. If that's a problem for you, don't use Hoefler faces.
Independent foundries want to sell typefaces with reasonable royalty shares. Customers want trusted marketplaces (i.e. ones where scammers aren't reselling fonts they've pirated) where they can purchase high quality fonts with reasonable licensing for reasonable prices. Both customers and foundries are poorly served by Monotype monopolizing the big font marketplaces.
The Monotype monopoly is a legitimate problem that people have legitimate complaints about.
You're saying, exclusively, that Monotype is app-storing the market for fonts by buying up the common tooling designers use to transact in fonts, right? You don't care what Monotype charges for its own fonts?
(That seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint).