Sorry about that, the introductory paragraph became unclear when I rearranged things.
We fully agree, I think it's awesome that typefaces are not IP — what I find fucked up is the present situation where everyone tiptoes around that fact and kowtows to the foundries, because anything less would be an affront to typography itself (ala 'hating the troops').
Upstart type nerds everywhere could legally be crafting better-implemented versions of Helvetica — but they aren't, because other type-nerds would beat them up for paying such an insult to the $300m corporation that owns the name.
We fully agree, I think it's awesome that typefaces are not IP — what I find fucked up is the present situation where everyone tiptoes around that fact and kowtows to the foundries, because anything less would be an affront to typography itself (ala 'hating the troops').
Upstart type nerds everywhere could legally be crafting better-implemented versions of Helvetica — but they aren't, because other type-nerds would beat them up for paying such an insult to the $300m corporation that owns the name.