Comment by omnimus

Fonts might seem trivial but actually there is a lot of engineering going on underneath. There is whole programming language underneath that allows fonts to do what they do, spacing between characters, how they should be rasterized on screens and also making them widely compatible.

So in same way as one would expect “its just a CRUD app” it should be trivial computing task to make a “different” copy. No unless you do some decompilation of the font which is breaking the license.

About why people bother… maybe the biggest issue typography (and lot of design in general) have is that if done right it's mostly invisible or natural. You notice typography only when it's done badly - it's very subconscious. That doesn't mean it's not ongoing topic with experts dedicating their lives to it. And for them even differences between variations of Helvetica matter. If you look around yourself you will have typography absolutely everywhere - you have probably 1000s of different fonts just in your home. You probably don't notice them but you would if our society standards were lower.