The design of typefaces aren’t copyrighted in the U.S. The only thing that is protected is the software: TTFs, OTFs, etc. [1] That’s why so many clones of popular fonts (and old metal type) exist.

These days the value in a font isn’t in the letterforms, it’s in the kerning, ligatures, variability, etc. which all flows from the software. It’s also where a significant amount of the labor in creating a typeface comes from. And it’s the thing that sets apart professional-quality fonts from many (but not all!) free ones.

If AI can write new font software by cloning bitmaps of letterforms _and_ get the kerning, ligatures, variability, etc. right… it’ll change the type foundry industry in a big way.

[1]: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf

Licensing fonts is just such a headache that I would never want to deal with it. They are usually based on metrics that are pretty cumbersome to track.

If you want a custom font where no OFL licensed alternative would work I'd rather hire someone to design a new font. I guess that is also the reason so many companies now have their own custom font (e.g. Spotify, Adobe, etc.).

Just beware of OFL with a Reserved Font Name, you can't modify them (and building from source counts as modification) and redistribute without renaming them. This is especially a problem for Debian since they like to build everything from source, including fonts.

https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts/Bugs/rfn-violation https://wiki.debian.org/AutoGeneratedFiles