How often do people contribute to open source fonts?

Jay Langly

Interested in hearing about experiences with open source fonts and what the contributions are like? I often see calls for participation from designers who embrace 'openness' re software licences and so on. But I'm often doubtful about how participatory it is – a quick glance at the contribution history shows it's usually a one-designer job anyway.

George Thomas

Have you ever seen anything designed by a committee? Not a pretty sight. Your doubts are on target.

John Hudson

I've not contributed to open source fonts in the sense of taking the step of feeding additions or revisions back into the source distribution, but I have done some work for clients or colleagues that involved such additions and revisions to the Linux Libertine open source fonts. It was somewhat frustrating, because I kept seeing sloppy things in the fonts that I would want to fix, and would have to remind myself that I wasn't being paid to do that. A simple job like adding new diacritic composites to a font becomes frustrating, for example, if there is no consistency in the handling of the existing diacritic mark positioning. Does one fix all the existing composites first, so that one can make the new ones consistent? Or does one just try to make the new ones look as good as possible and accept the existing inconsistencies?

Chris Lozos

It is hard enough for me to resist redrawing every glyph that I do every time I see it after a brief absence. I can't imagine a committee full of mixed interpretations.

George Thomas

...because I kept seeing sloppy things in the fonts that I would want to fix...

I have looked at one or two projects in the past, and that one thing stopped me from participating. I quickly realized it would consume more of my time than I was prepared to give.