3 May 2015 yosch   » (Master)

Microsoft releasing an open font!

So, after the pleasant but rather unexpected news of Adobe's Source * font families released openly and developed on a public git repo, now we have Microsoft starting to release fonts under the OFL for one of their many projects!

Who would have thought that this could actually happen, that such big font producers would even consider doing this?

But I guess cross-platform web technologies and the corresponding culture tends to carry with it the values of interoperability, consistency and flexibility... And it just makes sense to have unencumbered licensing for that. There must be some value in pursuing that approach, right?

The Selawik font (only Latin coverage at this point) is part of (bootstrap)-WinJS and is designed to be a open replacement for Segoe UI.

A quick look at the metadata reveals:

Full name: Selawik
Version: 1.01
Copyright: (c) 2015 Microsoft Corporation (www.microsoft.com), with Reserved Font Name Selawik. Selawik is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
License: This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
License URL: http://opensource.org/licenses/OFL-1.1
Designer: Aaron Bell
Designer URL: http://www.microsoft.com/typography
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
Vendor URL: http://www.microsoft.com/typography
Trademark: Selawik is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.


Quite a contrast from the very exclusive licenses attached to the fonts commissioned for Windows...

(Oh and the apparent toponym with an Inupiat name is a nice touch too).


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