Monotype buys Extensis

Thomas Phinney

Monotype bought Extensis for their font/asset management. Extensis are the Portland-based makers of Connect—what used to be called Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type server.

https://www.monotype.com/company/press-release/monotype-announces-acquisition-extensis

Stuart Sandler

I'm not sure anybody realizes what a threat this acquisition is to their future income if you're not distributing your fonts via a Monotype platform. Comically Extensis has focused its marketing almost fully on espousing the worry to large companies getting sued for not having the correct licensing. Drawing a straight line connecting one to the other couldn't be more obvious.

Remember kids, the less places that surface your fonts means the less likely they are to be purchased or licensed and if the only Extensis search result for your font name is 'here's fonts similar to 'your font name' - expect less touch points for your work to get in front of designer's eyeballs, especially large organizations that use font management tools like Extensis solely. Admittedly great font management tools and now a direct sales pipeline to Monotype.

Mark Simonson

How many people still use Suitcase (i.e., Connect)?

Stuart Sandler

According to their site 300k users daily worldwide - https://www.extensis.com/

Thomas Phinney

I was still using a version of Suitcase from 2019.

(Currently trying to migrate to “Typeface.” This would be easier if I had used the “Vault” approach in Suitcase, but I did not.)

I have weird needs. On the one hand, I have 19,000 fonts. (or more if I search the entire drive what with old versions and things from friends and clients that I was just researching or helping on.) On the other hand, I only need to occasionally activate some set of fonts. Mostly I browse and maybe activate a family or two, once in a while. I sometimes go a week or three without doing anything, but occasionally have more active needs. Reliable auto-activation would be nice, but since I was super frustrated, I didn’t update.

More so once I had to do a subscription, given my light usage.

I was tempted to upgrade, to see if they ever fixed the massive memory leak that caused the app to just consume memory day after day until I had to force restart its font management core engine (not just the app) every week or two. I was told to assume there was a problem font, and that I should just use process of elimination to figure out which, by trying removing fonts. But that was obviously a total non-starter when you have 19K fonts.

At upgrade consideration time, I was quite offended that Extensis would require you to give them your email address, just to SEE what the features and interface details of latest version of their app are. As former product manager and current user, of course I was already on their list. It was just a matter of principle. Not a behavior I wanted to support.

James Puckett

Eventually users won’t even be able to download their MyFonts purchases. Fonts will be activated through Connect and it will be impossible to add more users without buying more licenses.

Thomas Phinney

Seems totally plausible.

Might have a “Light” version of Connect with few features, but free, for this purpose.

Back in the day Extensis had Universal Type Server (the client/server version of Suitcase Fusion), and there was indeed a Light version, at least for a while. Few features on the client side, but could activate, and could provide the locked-down situation desired by the admin.

I haven’t looked at the features or even existence of the serious client/server version of Connect in years now. (Again, forcing users to sign in to even look at your software: may make sales, but does not generate goodwill or more knowledgeable folks out there. I would read more, if the info were public.)

Tural Alisoy

If I got a job at one of the font foundries, I wouldn't sell fonts at Monotype anymore. They're really starting to get worse and worse and not trying to solve the problems that arise. They've already started to create a virtual monopoly.

John Hudson

As I have said many times, the big type companies have been trying for years to resurrect the closed system of typesetting machinery in virtual, digital form. Adobe’s CS font subscription does this, and Monotype’s purchase of Extensis looks like another step in the same direction. The control this potentially provides is twofold: if customers want MT fonts they could be required to do so via MT font management software, and if independent foundries want to license fonts to those same clients they could end up being pressured into licensing via MT. Customers, especially large corporations with complex IT management tend to favour single, simple solutions. This is why we see the phenomenon of people seeking ‘fonts that look like X but are available via Adobe Fonts or Google Fonts’. The result is the squeezing out of independent foundry direct licensing.

Nadine Chahine

This is so hilariously Monotype. As in, so typically inept in how they go around in circles... Linotype introduced Font Explorer X in 2005 (launched at ATypI in Finland) and it was a much better product than Suitcase and designers LOVED it. Then after Monotype took over, there was a bigger and bigger push to make money with it, though the original Linotype intention was to keep it free. So they assigned revenue targets, then started taking away resources, then moved its project manager to other projects. FEX limped on for many years till they killed it off last year. 

And now they go and acquire another font manager. Like, seriously wtf... 

André G. Isaak

I’m actually still using FEX, and it’s one of the main reason I’ve let my system stall at Monterey. Now I keep getting warnings from Adobe, Microsoft, et al. that I need to update my system to accommodate software updates.

Mind you, I also declined to buy Apple Silicon, opting instead for a refurbed i7 so that I could continue to use FontLab Studio 5 (in a parallels VM), so perhaps I’m just a Luddite.

Jens Kutilek

FWIW, FontLab studio 5 works just fine in a Windows 11 Parallels VM on Apple Silicon

Igor Petrovic

Are there open-source font managers that could be a reliable solution for big companies? If not, how complicated is it to code a decent one?

Thomas Phinney

It is VERY complicated to “code a decent one.” Users’ needs and preferences (both!) vary so wildly. Fonts are complicated things. Did you notice I mentioned a memory leak in a quite mature (2019) release of Suitcase Fusion?

Aside from things that are only on Linux/Unix, there is an open source app called Fontmatrix. But nobody is aware of it and it hasn’t had so much as a dot release in four years.

As with a lot of things, you can get 80% of the functionality for the first 20% of the work. But there is the rub.

There is, however, one bright side at the moment. A new font manager that is just being started today… probably does not need to deal with Type 1! Just with OpenType/TrueType... maybe also Apple .dfont on Mac, but that is a different wrapping of mostly the same info (ok, plus the resource fork, I know). Still, skipping Type 1 is a noticeable (albeit not huge) lowering of the barrier to entry.

Personally, I haven’t been really enthusiastic about the interface of any font management app since Font Reserve (acquired by Extensis in 2003, discontinued a few years later, some tech elements merged into Suitcase, hence the “Fusion” in the name.) FontExplorer was okay, and… I can’t find anything else that I like. I want at least an option of a main table-based view that has one row per font and/or family (probably with an expansion element), and then has configurable columns for what other info is displayed. Basically like what Font Reserve had. Suitcase was once more like this and went further away from it. (But I am not suggesting my personal tastes/needs in this matter should be some barometer of excellence. Just one use case or user style.)

Miles Newlyn

A little off topic, but I was talking to exec. brand management and procurement of a multi billion dollar company this week and they were concerned about what happens when an independent foundry retires. Their concern is that the independent's IP would be bought by Monotype, who would then extort the licensees of that foundry. Such is the reputation of Monotype in C-Suite procurement now.

Mark Simonson

Why do people still use font managers? The original reason for Suitcase (which started out on the Mac) was to get around the 256 font limit of Mac OS at the time and the fact that you had to restart apps if you changed fonts in the default way (adding to the System Folder). 

Personally, I haven’t used a font manager since the early 2000s, when I realized it was easier just to move folders of fonts in and out of the Fonts folder.

James Puckett

Mark Simonson said:

Why do people still use font managers?

Because many designers have thousands of fonts that they like to look through before starting a project. And in studios the IT department likes to manage all the fonts from one server instead of letting users have control.

Mark Simonson

A bit of myopathy on my part. I haven’t worked in a corporate setting for almost 25 years.

Kent Lew

A single-server + clients situation, like what James mentions, is the strongest use case in my experience, like in a large studio or publisher setting. Font licensing (& vetting) gets managed (& controlled) at a consolidated level, and individual art directors/designers/teams activate subsets from the server as needed for the projects at hand.

Christopher Slye

I don’t mean to wave away the concerns about Adobe entirely, but that seems like a very different situation than what’s going on with Monotype. Adobe really doesn’t want to monetize licensing at all (not directly anyway), they just want to add value to their platform. Adobe Fonts’ licensing is limited, and if someone needs more, Adobe won’t touch it – an end user will hopefully end up talking to the foundry in those cases.

Monotype, on the other hand, really does want to manage all licensing in all cases, end-to-end. It does seem like Extensis will help them do that.

(It’s been some years now, but at Adobe, I heard from many large customers who used Universal Type Server. It seemed popular.)

John Hudson

Adobe really doesn’t want to monetize licensing at all (not directly anyway), they just want to add value to their platform.

Which was exactly the reason why typesetting machine manufacturers made and licensed typefaces: to add value to the machines that were their primary source of revenue. My concern with this model is that it creates an environment in which the users of the machine—people with a CS subscription—get used to only using the fonts that are available via the machine, which in turn allows the machine makers to dictate terms to the people who create typefaces.

I agree that this is a different issue than what Monotype are doing, but I would say that—despite their very different business models—Monotype, Adobe Fonts, and Google Fonts are all examples of building virtual typesetting machines that put pressure on independent font makers who effectively have to pay-to-play in various ways to have access to the users of those machines.

Christopher Slye

I agree that this is a different issue than what Monotype are doing, but I would say that—despite their very different business models—Monotype, Adobe Fonts, and Google Fonts are all examples of building virtual typesetting machines that put pressure on independent font makers who effectively have to pay-to-play in various ways to have access to the users of those machines.

I think your analogy works with Adobe, certainly. That’s pretty much been Adobe’s business model, vis-a-vis type, from Day 1.

I think it’s somewhat true with Google, in that they have carved out some territory with web fonts, and certainly Google Fonts rules there. Obviously it’s more open, so the “lock-in” is less severe, but certainly real to some degree.

Monotype doesn’t really control any kind of “typesetting machine,” though. In fact, they must certainly lust after Adobe’s platform, but in the end they are dependent on Adobe, or Google, or whatever their customers are using. They have a lock on some very important type IP, so they certainly are a force to be reckoned with, but I don’t think they have the same power over the ecosystem.

Incidentally, you are talking about “CC” subscriptions, not “CS.” The Creative Suite has been dead for some time now.

John Hudson

You are right, of course, that Monotype don’t have a significant control over typesetting environments, per se, but it seems to me that they are coming at the machine analogy from a different perspective, similarly seeking to exercise  control over what fonts are accessible to users within those environments. This is where the risk to independent foundries is: allowing big companies to create systems of apparent convenience that encourage users to first rely on and then insist on. It is in this respect that I consider Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts, and Monotype’s subscription system similar. The virtual typesetting machine analogy shouldn’t be taken too literally: the main point is to highlight that the primary income to the big companies is not from licensing of individual fonts and families—as it is for independent foundries—but from elsewhere, from the machine-like systems of subscription models or, in Google’s case, a whole ecosystem of notionally free things supporting surveillance-based ad revenue.

I use the machine analogy to link this to our collective history: to the period when capital-driven corporations like Linotype and Monotype and their imitators made money from the selling of typesetting machinery and only secondarily from the selling of value-added fonts to use on those systems, to the collapse of that business model with the advent of desktop publishing, to the flowering of independent font foundries that followed that collapse, and the efforts of capital-driven corporations to remake that business model in various ways, which I worry will squish the flowers. Simply put, their interests do not align with ours.

John Butler

It's important to remember that Postscript Type 1 was designed as a proprietary format, and it was never Adobe’s original intention to facilitate a global type market outside their control. To their credit, I don't recall them pushing back much once the genie escaped the bottle. At least not on the font format level.

John Hudson

Agreed, although I think it was pretty inevitable that widespread desktop computer use signalled the end of that kind of proprietary font format. It was only a matter of time before either Microsoft or Apple produced a competing format, because they needed one.

Igor Petrovic

I am not a user, but this seems related:
https://www.reddit.com/r/typography/comments/1gvs1lw/extensis_connect_problem/

Thomas Phinney

John Butler said:

It's important to remember that Postscript Type 1 was designed as a proprietary format, and it was never Adobe’s original intention to facilitate a global type market outside their control. To their credit, I don't recall them pushing back much once the genie escaped the bottle. At least not on the font format level.

You probably know this, but once Microsoft and Apple announced TrueType, Adobe responded by:

1) Publishing the Type 1 specification
2) Creating a system-level on-screen rendering system for Type 1, which also allowed the vector fonts to print to non-PostScript devices for the first time (Adobe Type Manager).

Surprisingly (to me, anyway), Adobe completed both of these things before TrueType fonts and rendering actually shipped.

So it wasn’t just that they didn’t try to put it back in the bottle—Adobe actively let that genie out of the bottle! Not that they wanted to do so; it was necessary to maintain any relevance for Type 1. Trying to keep it a secret format was no longer a viable option.

Mark Simonson

Some vendors had already reverse-engineered Type 1 by 1988 or 1989.

Bitstream, for example, was shipping unauthorized-by-Adobe Type 1 fonts, which they called “Type A” fonts. I bought some in 1989. After Adobe published the Type 1 spec, Bitstream offered an upgrade to Type 1 versions of their Type A fonts and stopped shipping Type A fonts.

But I agree with @Thomas Phinney that if Adobe hadn’t published the Type 1 format, it would have killed it.