JetBrains makes an IDE and that is the default font in the IDE. So to be fair to them, at least theirs is a case where investing in a font has a direct effect on the product and business.
Ugh, the font itself seems okay I guess, but I don't understand why, in a font ostensibly designed for legibility, you would choose an open zero in lieu of a slashed or dotted zero.
It's a prestige project architected to give someone in the Technology Division the feels of working for a big tech company. It's the same reason they have "Fellow" positions.
This culture drove me up the wall when I worked there. "How does this make money?" was sure to get dirty looks from these types of people.
You could say the same about any aspect of design - logos, outfits, UI styles, color palettes, you name it. These things can bring subtle character and recognition to a brand, and it’s not really a smart thing to be skimping on.
I mean, I'm not sure the world needs more font faces when the existing set of many many options seems to do a pretty good job for all purposes (who ever thinks, "boy this job would be much easier with a font more appropriately suited to the task, but alas, no such font exists"?)
However, I did really enjoy the introduction slides, some great design work there for sure.
From what I’ve heard (sorry, no good references, so please correct me if this is wrong), it’s often cheaper for a big corporation to commission a custom typeface than to license an existing one. Plus it’s an opportunity for branding and some good PR.
This comment didn't make sense to me, it seems like this is like saying there are enough paintings or sculptures in the world for people to see whatever kind of art they want and have whatever emotional reactions they're going to get from the existing art.
This isn't like open source license proliferation or something, having more fonts is just more room for experimentation and creativity, more choice for designers, etc. you don't have to keep up with every single one, and it doesn't make things harder like eg. open source license proliferation where the more of them you have the more you need a lawyer to review every dependency.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's some harm here?
Ah, yeah I do see where you're coming from. I guess I just haven't been looking at font faces so much as "art" (mostly because it seems like there isn't a lot of room for variation or creativity; most of these "new" font faces look more or less the same to me, but that could also just be my untrained eye).
You're totally right that there's no harm, and I also wasn't trying to belittle the effort of making new fonts! I was more wondering why a _company_ would want to expend the probably quite significant resources to create a whole new font (as opposed to a solo artist doing it for fun, which I'd understand) -- but the other response to my top-level comment gives some good reasoning to that question :)
What is the reason for extremely large font size trends, especially ticking up after 2015?
Huge typography is obnoxious, from marketing philosophy standpoint - it screams insecurity. From a technical standpoint, it is inappropriate for the screen size. Yet designers today love choosing HUGE typography to be bold and daring. From Dropbox to IBM, from GS to Apple - this whole trendy huge font thing bothers me.
I understand that they're using huge font sizes to show off to the world their new typeface. Make no mistake, it will be used in huge sizes as it is the current trend - a cool thing to do as a designer is to employ massive bold typography today.
What's that have to do with Font licenses? I am talking about the size of the font taking up almost half of my screen.
> It's far cheaper to take something like Helvetica
Helvetica costs $$$ if you want to use it for commercial use. No more than any other font. Also, you cannot modify Helvetica, especially if you get it from Monotype (previously Linotype): https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/helvetica/
Even ripping off requires time/money. Font design isn't a trivial activity that most people deem it to be.
I suggest downloading FontForge and try to make your own ripoff. You'll be amazed at the complexity and the skill required to design a typeface. Adjusting kerning pairs alone will take weeks of meticulous work.
No, most [citation needed] fonts cost money (assuming you mean "free as in beer"). Also just because a font is free as in beer (ie maybe it's shipped with your OS or something) doesn't necessarily mean that it's free to use on your website: everything is still copyright by default in most jurisdictions. Some fonts provide you with a license just like open source software (which may or may not be an open source or free software license, there are plenty of fonts that license themselves specifically for webfonts and charge a fee, or something along those lines).
I think there's a good case to be made that most well-designed fonts, particularly for body text, still cost money. It takes a lot of time and effort to design a good body font. Having said that, the word "still" in my first sentence is doing a lot of work. :) I think over the last... oh, let's say 15 years, free fonts (both in the freedom and beer sense of "free") have really stepped up their game, and there's an increasing number of great ones out there.
Having said that, though, if you're an organization looking for subtle branding through typography, you aren't gonna go for any font, commercial or otherwise, that's in wide use. For Goldman Sachs, the cost isn't the point -- it's not like they couldn't afford to license any font they wanted in perpetuity. The branding is.
Well, body text in browsers now tends to be set in larger than the long-held default of 16px mostly because so many people have not only larger screens but denser screens than we did twenty years ago. I tend to land around 18 or 19px for body type, although that depends on the typeface and use case. (A lot of what I'm "typesetting" for the web is long-form fiction and it turns out that going a little bit bigger than "standard" often increases readability, although just a little.)
But I don't know that this is really a "trend"; Apple.com's body font size, for instance, appears to be 17px. If you actually look around the Goldman Sachs Design web site, they're actually using a surprising amount of 14px text as body text -- if anything, I think their design standards are for text that's too small, not too large.
(And, no, I really don't think Hacker News's default 12px body font is reasonable; I view this site zoomed to 115% or 125% normally.)
You could be forgiven for mistaking this for just about anything Erik Spiekermann has designed. I find this style of squashed humanist sans-serif to be so uninteresting. You’d think there would be more variation in character to be found in that space, but something about making a condensed sans-serif in this style makes everything look... cautious and indistinguishable.
Fitting for an organization like Goldman Sachs, I suppose.
Firefox on iOS is just Safari with different chrome (oh how ironic a word, but I mean the browser UI) since Apple doesn't allow third parties to JIT (which is essentially required for JS, so everyone uses iOS' builtin webview)
I think JIT and custom code is the same requirement in this discussion. In Chrome's case, the V8 engine is a JIT compiler from JS to ARM instructions. The code of V8 can be vetted during the review process, but the ARM instructions that it will generate (just in time) can not.
> 3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework.
Additionally, JIT would need a special entitlement to be able to change a page of memory from writable to executable. This is a little dangerous from a security perspective, and even Apple only grants it to apps the specifically need it.
Thats all nice and good, but completely removing the posibility of running any non-vendor JIT application is totally stupid and unacceptable. And iOS being a total walled garden only adds insult to injury, as users simply can't install such applications even if they want to.
I don't know the exact details of how jailbreaking tweaks code-signing.
But as I understand it apps are signed and have an entitlements file bundled inside. That file determines whether the kernel will allow stuff like changing pages to executable, running in the background, notifications, etc. Safari happens to have this extra entitlement in its embedded entitlements.plist. The signature checks out, so the the kernel allows the functionality.
For example, there is an entitlement to allow a debugger to attach, which dev builds of apps typically have, but Apple won't allow for apps in the store. I would think that if jailbreak short circuited the signature stuff, you could put whatever entitlements you want in there. But there may be some additional constraints.
Now that I'm thinking of it, I wonder if dev builds of apps can have the entitlement to do the JIT magic. I don't know if they place any constraints on the dev signing keys.
Oh I was confused as I associated a JIT with internal vm optimizations such as seen in the JVM. Then we’re just talking about the same thing but calling it a different name.
I think a JIT compiler is basically required to run Javascript at an acceptable speed on a mobile device. The world has moved on from the time when you could get away with an interpreted Javascript engine.
Conceptually, yeah, it's not required. But in practice there are a whole lot of websites that make heavy (HEAVY) use of JS, and performance would not be acceptable for a lot of users.
I'm not saying those websites are correct in doing that, but in effect browsers are expected to have JIT to maintain any userbase at all, because such websites are so numerous that it would make it seem it is an actual browser "issue" in the eyes of laypeople.
Depends. Hermes[1] JS engine from Facebook do not have JIT and provide better perf for React Native.
Modern V8 have both interpreter Ignition[2] and TurboFan[3] JITed compiler. My understanding is that on most websites Ignition will be sufficient but when using omething like SPA application TurboFan will gradually speedup bytecode generated by Ignition using JIT like technology.
I am not sure if JIT is required. There are even ideas to compile Typescript to WebAssembly[4]. You could create a compiler that compile strict subset of JS to more performant Webassembly and it would outperform modern JS engines.
I agree, a typeface for numerical use should pay attention to that! I like the typeface used in new versions of JetBrains IDEs like Pycharm. There's special attention paid to disambiguating 0 from O and also ; from : and many other details!
Ugh, all that clicking for the next page. Why not put it all on one page or a pdf for that matter? Reminds me of click bait factory design: Take up the whole page, each nugget of meaning is a separate page, draw it out as long as possible for the clicks.
On my pretty standard-resolution 1920x1080 screen, the "next" arrow requires scrolling to see. ...So they made it so you can't scroll through, but have to scroll a bit on each panel to get to the next one. It's inherently horrifying that this site exists.
I get why companies want in-house fonts that define their brand and avoid licensing fees, but I always find designers' blog posts about how they designed a font to be insanely and incredibly self-congratulatory while focusing on things that almost no human on earth will ever notice.
Also I got an extra horizontal scroll bar that had no room left to scroll (...if that makes sense the the scrollbar was visible but you could not scroll left or right) on Firefox.
Kinda disappointing for a "design-ery" focused thing to have some really bad design requiring scrolling, as well as screwed up sizing that triggers pointless scrollbars.
Companies do a font fork to stop paying for the royalties for the most famous ones. Millions of pages for an unlimited amount of time adds up to more than the cost to create a shiny new font i.e. $50k. This is probably one of the first cost hacks technology companies figured out before big finance.
Who wants to bet Barclay, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank do not have their own font by 2030?
I would be willing to bet Goldman spent way more than $50k creating this font. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if just the website showcasing the font cost more than that.
>Companies do a font fork to stop paying for the royalties for the most famous ones. Millions of pages for an unlimited amount of time adds up to more than the cost to create a shiny new font
I worked at GS back in the day, and the "standard" font was Univers. AFAICT there was a global corporate license for it which was highly unlikely to be cheap.
I think they probably get this font in addition to all of the rebranding. Assuming that they could license Helvetica and that they have one app (Marcus) and putting in 33 thousand users (employee count) you can get to around ~$50k.
b. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software in any “open source” or other code that would create any obligation for Goldman Sachs to: (i) grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights; (ii) disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances; or (iii) otherwise subject Goldman Sachs to any obligations not expressly set forth in this License.
Ambiguous legal language grounded in a likely misunderstanding of what "open source" means. And of course, you have to flip through a dozen screens to make it to the download page to find the license.
This is a project to make a positive impression which fails to do that. So close -- we need more good open types -- and yet clueless.
It imagines a model of open source wherein I can take some Goldman Sachs code (the font), use it in my project, then start making legal demands of Goldman Sachs because I used their code. I would be quite surprised if such a license existed, because it would be a legal absurdity.
"grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights;"
If I've used this on a web page, a third-party has the rights to view and make local cached copies of the web page.
"disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances;"
If I put this into a document, printed it, and handed it to my mom, I've just made a derivative work available to third-parties (and yes, the compiled font is a derivative of the source code, if you parse the 'therefore' that way).
... and so on.
I'm giving intentionally absurd examples, but legal language like this is just absurdly poorly-written and stupid. Whatever you want legal language to say, you want it to be clear and unambiguous. That protects everyone involved; there are clear limits, and nothing for courts to argue about. In this case, even the basic grammar is ambiguous (pronouns pointing into voids, chains of ambiguous and/or clauses, etc.)
Virtually /any/ use of this font falls into a legal gray zone, and so creates a massive liability for everyone involved in using this, ironically including Goldman Sachs itself. Many clauses are bad enough a judge would just toss them out, and that leaves a legal document that looks a lot like Swiss cheese.
Most first-year law students would be embarrassed to draft legal text like this, and most lawyers would be concerned about legal malpractice if they let a document like this slip out.
That's just in the legal language is written. One level up, we run into fundamental misconceptions of how open source works, of how copyright works, as well as a slew of missing standard license boilerplate.
And on top of that, we have the basic strategic issue: Except for exceptional cases, it makes sense to use an existing, vetted license; it's usually stupid to draft your own unless there's a darned good reason (and in that case, you'd better find a qualified lawyer). Even if you do draft your own, you should start with an existing, vetted license, and modify the parts which don't fit, and find a competent lawyer to do it.
I've met elementary school students who wrote better legal language than this. This makes Goldman look incompetent. It's not a good look for an investment bank.
Are you a lawyer or legally trained? Honestly interested to know because you're expounding on this with some degree of forcefulness, but you also seem to have some unusual understandings of legal terms as I would understand them.
e.g.
- viewing or caching a web page doesn't require the grant of intellectual property or proprietary right - that would be me assigning you the copyright or allowing you to sell it or something;
- a printed document that uses a font is not a derivative work of the font because the typeface (vs. the code of the font itself) is not copyrightable;
- "all rights reserved" refers to all rights of intellectual property ownership under the copyright, which absolutely are retained when licensing as opposed to assigning.
Just on that last thing in particular: another example of a software license that has an 'all rights reserved' copyright statement and requires distribution of both the copyright statement and the license would be the BSD license.
An example of another software license that explicitly separates copyright and licensing when describing itself would be the GPL, in either v2 or v3 form.
Fair enough. The original 4-clause license is also in the hall-of-fame of bad licenses. I believe you can also find bad legal code in a lot of the NC licenses, WTFPL, and the Hypocratic/ethical licenses in the same hall-of-fame. I wouldn't use any of those as examplars.
If it makes you feel better, I found a link written by an actual JD:
Remind me of why we're still having this discussion. Unless you can post a link supporting your assertion, I think I've provided ample evidence at this point.
I am not a lawyer, but I have taken law classes focused on business and IP law. I've also worked with a lot of lawyers around licensing issues.
My understanding is that copyright ownership grants a specific set of exclusive rights:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work;
(2) to prepare derivative works;
(3) to distribute copies of the copyrighted work;
(4) to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
"All rights reserved" is (a now obsolete) notice which says exactly what it means: these rights remain with the owner. You get a physical copy of a book, and that's all. You have only the rights granted to you under fair use doctrine, first sale doctrine, etc. In contrast, a license is a grant of some of those rights to other parties. It doesn't assign away copyright ownership, but it does says that you may, for example, make a copy of my program under the terms defined in the license.
It's worth referencing the difference between a license and a contract here, but that's a whole legal essay in itself, so I'll point to Moglen's writing here, as well as the discussion around the recent Artifex Software, Inc. v. Hancom, Inc.
But yes, I was sloppy on the printed document example. I apologize. Take emailing my mom a PDF instead, which embeds a version of the font program rather than rendering the typeface. Thank you for pointing that out.
I was intentionally giving examples which fell into a legal gray zone, though -- things which a judge would likely rule were okay, but which fell outside of the scope of the license as written. Those are the sorts of things which tend to blow up into expensive litigation. When drafting legal text, you want to leave nothing to being misinterpreted by a user or a judge, and you definitely don't want clauses which go against established law. If I'm a judge reading a contract or a license which has a clause which goes against the law, I can (1) restrict the scope of the clause to what's permissible under the law (2) toss out the clause, (3) toss out the whole license/contract, or (4) do something completely unpredictable. At the very least, if I have a contract or license which falls into a gray zone, I want a severability clause (and key clauses repeated with different scopes, some version clearly within the law, to make sure /something/ is left standing).
Disclaimer: Nothing here constitutes legal advice.
The React project was under a license that had a similar clause for a while. It basically took Wordpress deciding that they're not gonna use React for it to change.
There are many countries in the world. You're making an assumption that in exactly none of them could something crazy like this be enforced. That's a big bet you're making, and a tiny one for GS to include this language.
> There are many countries in the world. You're making an assumption that in exactly none of them could something crazy like this be enforced.
Licenses should not attempt to optimise for hypothetical legal systems that may exist somewhere and do not follow the laws of logic. "Put it in, just in case" could be used to justify literally any absurdity.
> and a tiny one for GS to include this language.
As a sibling comment by @wegs pointed out:
> [L]egal language like this is just absurdly poorly-written and stupid. Whatever you want legal language to say, you want it to be clear and unambiguous. That protects everyone involved[.]
Which is to say, Goldman Sachs is entirely welcome to spam their license with absurdities. But don't expect anyone else to come along for the ride.
Because it's not protecting itself from a risk. A badly-written license or contract exposes Goldman to significant and unknown risks.
This is why you should always either (a) Use a standard license (b) Hire a good lawyer to draft a license. Don't draft one yourself, and don't get a bad lawyer.
The most basic bar I would have before doing honest business with a bank is that they can do competent legal due diligence. They don't need clever or brilliant lawyers, but at the very least, banks lawyers need to be able to handle routine work without errors. Goldman just flunked that very low bar.
Perhaps they'll fix this, so we have a backup for posterity's sake (and this is okay to post -- legal documents are generally not copyrightable).
If this is too long, please feel free to downvote so it's hidden. I'm not a karma collector. :)
----
Goldman Sachs Restricted Font License
A. Background
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC (“Goldman Sachs”) owns the copyright interests in and to a font style entitled “Goldman Sans” (“Licensed Font”). Goldman Sachs is providing this license of the Licensed Font software (the “License”) free of charge as long as it is used in compliance with this License.
B. Definitions
A “Font” is a typeface that can be used for text, character display, HTML, style sheets, and the like.; it includes the normal character set, as well as additional font styles such as underlined, bold, and italicized. “Licensed Font Software” refers to the set of files released by Goldman Sachs under this License to the Goldman Sans Font, and may include source files, build scripts and documentation.
C. Grant and Scope of License
By reproducing, distributing, publicly displaying or otherwise using the Licensed Font Software, you agree to abide by this License. Anyone who uses the Licensed Font Software is a “User,” regardless of how, where, or from whom the Licensed Font Software is obtained.
Permission is hereby granted to the User, a limited, royalty-free, nonexclusive, and revocable license to use, reproduce, and distribute unmodified copies of the Licensed Font Software, subject to the following conditions:
a. The User may not modify or make derivative works of or sell (by itself or with any other item or software), sub-license, bundle, or embed copies of the Licensed Font Software.
b. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software in any “open source” or other code that would create any obligation for Goldman Sachs to: (i) grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights; (ii) disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances; or (iii) otherwise subject Goldman Sachs to any obligations not expressly set forth in this License.
c. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software to disparage or suggest any affiliation with or endorsement by Goldman Sachs.
e. The License is subject to other prior or future licenses that Goldman Sachs may grant to other parties.
User expressly agrees that all proprietary right, title, and interest in and to and control of the Licensed Font Software are and shall at all times be solely owned by Goldman Sachs and hereby acknowledges that nothing contained in this License shall give User any right, title. or interest in or to the ownership or use of the Licensed Font Software, except the restricted use provided herein.
D. Trademarks
“GOLDMAN,” “GOLDMAN SACHS,” and “GOLDMAN SANS” (coll...
I'm interested in the Typeface itself.
- The diagonal/emphasis on "5" is a great improvement to differentiate it from "S". Roboto tried something similar, but execution is better here imo.
- Reducing the standard width deviation between letters will also be of great help for mobile, number driven usage - without going full monospace.
- The "u" simply being an inverted "n", the "m" using the same shoulders and stems as the "n are things that go against the premise of a fully legible font. I would revise this.
Interesting font. The presentation of this page looks pretty bad on a window that is ~1000px wide. Not sure why it was designed in a way that forced a single ratio.
154 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadI'm sure there's an already popular font that has these attributes.
This culture drove me up the wall when I worked there. "How does this make money?" was sure to get dirty looks from these types of people.
You could say the same about any aspect of design - logos, outfits, UI styles, color palettes, you name it. These things can bring subtle character and recognition to a brand, and it’s not really a smart thing to be skimping on.
To find it you have to click through to the download page, which isn't yet the download. https://design.gs.com/d/design-system/foundation/typography/
[1] https://design.gs.com/d/legal/goldman-sans-license/
However, I did really enjoy the introduction slides, some great design work there for sure.
This isn't like open source license proliferation or something, having more fonts is just more room for experimentation and creativity, more choice for designers, etc. you don't have to keep up with every single one, and it doesn't make things harder like eg. open source license proliferation where the more of them you have the more you need a lawyer to review every dependency.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's some harm here?
You're totally right that there's no harm, and I also wasn't trying to belittle the effort of making new fonts! I was more wondering why a _company_ would want to expend the probably quite significant resources to create a whole new font (as opposed to a solo artist doing it for fun, which I'd understand) -- but the other response to my top-level comment gives some good reasoning to that question :)
Huge typography is obnoxious, from marketing philosophy standpoint - it screams insecurity. From a technical standpoint, it is inappropriate for the screen size. Yet designers today love choosing HUGE typography to be bold and daring. From Dropbox to IBM, from GS to Apple - this whole trendy huge font thing bothers me.
I understand that they're using huge font sizes to show off to the world their new typeface. Make no mistake, it will be used in huge sizes as it is the current trend - a cool thing to do as a designer is to employ massive bold typography today.
For context, I used to work on Google Fonts.
> It's far cheaper to take something like Helvetica
Helvetica costs $$$ if you want to use it for commercial use. No more than any other font. Also, you cannot modify Helvetica, especially if you get it from Monotype (previously Linotype): https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/helvetica/
I suggest downloading FontForge and try to make your own ripoff. You'll be amazed at the complexity and the skill required to design a typeface. Adjusting kerning pairs alone will take weeks of meticulous work.
Having said that, though, if you're an organization looking for subtle branding through typography, you aren't gonna go for any font, commercial or otherwise, that's in wide use. For Goldman Sachs, the cost isn't the point -- it's not like they couldn't afford to license any font they wanted in perpetuity. The branding is.
But I don't know that this is really a "trend"; Apple.com's body font size, for instance, appears to be 17px. If you actually look around the Goldman Sachs Design web site, they're actually using a surprising amount of 14px text as body text -- if anything, I think their design standards are for text that's too small, not too large.
(And, no, I really don't think Hacker News's default 12px body font is reasonable; I view this site zoomed to 115% or 125% normally.)
Fitting for an organization like Goldman Sachs, I suppose.
> We've engineered Marquee to leverage the latest technologies. Please upgrade to one of the following browsers:
Reading through the other comments, I’m shocked that this is simply a page describing a font, and yet it somehow needs “the latest technologies”.
(I’m currently using Firefox on iOS)
> 3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework.
Does this also apply to jailbroken iOS devices? I can imagine that it’s fairly difficult to disable a security feature such as this in the kernel?
But as I understand it apps are signed and have an entitlements file bundled inside. That file determines whether the kernel will allow stuff like changing pages to executable, running in the background, notifications, etc. Safari happens to have this extra entitlement in its embedded entitlements.plist. The signature checks out, so the the kernel allows the functionality.
For example, there is an entitlement to allow a debugger to attach, which dev builds of apps typically have, but Apple won't allow for apps in the store. I would think that if jailbreak short circuited the signature stuff, you could put whatever entitlements you want in there. But there may be some additional constraints.
Now that I'm thinking of it, I wonder if dev builds of apps can have the entitlement to do the JIT magic. I don't know if they place any constraints on the dev signing keys.
I thought it was only JIT due to my background with native apps, my bad.
I'm not saying those websites are correct in doing that, but in effect browsers are expected to have JIT to maintain any userbase at all, because such websites are so numerous that it would make it seem it is an actual browser "issue" in the eyes of laypeople.
Modern V8 have both interpreter Ignition[2] and TurboFan[3] JITed compiler. My understanding is that on most websites Ignition will be sufficient but when using omething like SPA application TurboFan will gradually speedup bytecode generated by Ignition using JIT like technology.
I am not sure if JIT is required. There are even ideas to compile Typescript to WebAssembly[4]. You could create a compiler that compile strict subset of JS to more performant Webassembly and it would outperform modern JS engines.
> Building products that put clients first.
I was hoping it would be at least a little longer before I needed to upgrade my PC again to run the 'latest technologies' on the web...
Also their page is missing a whitepaper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
A slash or dot for disambiguating zeroes would add a lot of noise visually especially in dense displays. Perhaps that's why.
See for yourself - I flipped a 0 and an O on this image, can you tell where? https://imgur.com/a/3hcg3zH
(For me it's easy but I prepared the modified image, so not blinded - hence my question that it's easy, right.)
real question - so how did you know there was an 0 flipped to O as well?
https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/
I get why companies want in-house fonts that define their brand and avoid licensing fees, but I always find designers' blog posts about how they designed a font to be insanely and incredibly self-congratulatory while focusing on things that almost no human on earth will ever notice.
Also I got an extra horizontal scroll bar that had no room left to scroll (...if that makes sense the the scrollbar was visible but you could not scroll left or right) on Firefox.
Kinda disappointing for a "design-ery" focused thing to have some really bad design requiring scrolling, as well as screwed up sizing that triggers pointless scrollbars.
Who wants to bet Barclay, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank do not have their own font by 2030?
1: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040803005135/en/Agf...
Even Insurance company's have there own
It's cheaper to make a new font than it is to get a perpetual license for an existing font? This (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618289) seems more plausible to me.
https://www.linotype.com/111515/credit-suisse-type-family.ht...
Don’t put this on users. I’m using latest iOS Firefox, not Netscape 4.0
Short of using Opera this might be the worst browser to use, so they're not wrong.
Why do you say it's the worst browser after Opera?
Apple could theoretically violate your privacy all they want through their rendering engine.
DO NOT > Blame the user ("You entered an invalid character")
https://design.gs.com/d/design-system/foundation/writing#err...
Used the calculator here: https://www.myfonts.com/licenses?type=sku&id=631501&cl=false
b. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software in any “open source” or other code that would create any obligation for Goldman Sachs to: (i) grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights; (ii) disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances; or (iii) otherwise subject Goldman Sachs to any obligations not expressly set forth in this License.
Ambiguous legal language grounded in a likely misunderstanding of what "open source" means. And of course, you have to flip through a dozen screens to make it to the download page to find the license.
This is a project to make a positive impression which fails to do that. So close -- we need more good open types -- and yet clueless.
It’s to protect against copy left obligations.
It imagines a model of open source wherein I can take some Goldman Sachs code (the font), use it in my project, then start making legal demands of Goldman Sachs because I used their code. I would be quite surprised if such a license existed, because it would be a legal absurdity.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg...
"grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights;"
If I've used this on a web page, a third-party has the rights to view and make local cached copies of the web page.
"disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances;"
If I put this into a document, printed it, and handed it to my mom, I've just made a derivative work available to third-parties (and yes, the compiled font is a derivative of the source code, if you parse the 'therefore' that way).
... and so on.
I'm giving intentionally absurd examples, but legal language like this is just absurdly poorly-written and stupid. Whatever you want legal language to say, you want it to be clear and unambiguous. That protects everyone involved; there are clear limits, and nothing for courts to argue about. In this case, even the basic grammar is ambiguous (pronouns pointing into voids, chains of ambiguous and/or clauses, etc.)
Here's another gem:
"each copy shall bear an appropriate copyright notice in substantially the form of '© 2020 Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC. All rights reserved.' and a copy of this License" -- well which is it: Are all rights reserved, or do I have additional rights as defined by this license?
Virtually /any/ use of this font falls into a legal gray zone, and so creates a massive liability for everyone involved in using this, ironically including Goldman Sachs itself. Many clauses are bad enough a judge would just toss them out, and that leaves a legal document that looks a lot like Swiss cheese.
Most first-year law students would be embarrassed to draft legal text like this, and most lawyers would be concerned about legal malpractice if they let a document like this slip out.
That's just in the legal language is written. One level up, we run into fundamental misconceptions of how open source works, of how copyright works, as well as a slew of missing standard license boilerplate.
And on top of that, we have the basic strategic issue: Except for exceptional cases, it makes sense to use an existing, vetted license; it's usually stupid to draft your own unless there's a darned good reason (and in that case, you'd better find a qualified lawyer). Even if you do draft your own, you should start with an existing, vetted license, and modify the parts which don't fit, and find a competent lawyer to do it.
I've met elementary school students who wrote better legal language than this. This makes Goldman look incompetent. It's not a good look for an investment bank.
e.g.
- viewing or caching a web page doesn't require the grant of intellectual property or proprietary right - that would be me assigning you the copyright or allowing you to sell it or something;
- a printed document that uses a font is not a derivative work of the font because the typeface (vs. the code of the font itself) is not copyrightable;
- "all rights reserved" refers to all rights of intellectual property ownership under the copyright, which absolutely are retained when licensing as opposed to assigning.
An example of another software license that explicitly separates copyright and licensing when describing itself would be the GPL, in either v2 or v3 form.
https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
That would contradict the license text.
If it makes you feel better, I found a link written by an actual JD:
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-term-all-rights-reser...
Remind me of why we're still having this discussion. Unless you can post a link supporting your assertion, I think I've provided ample evidence at this point.
My understanding is that copyright ownership grants a specific set of exclusive rights:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work; (2) to prepare derivative works; (3) to distribute copies of the copyrighted work; (4) to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6) to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
"All rights reserved" is (a now obsolete) notice which says exactly what it means: these rights remain with the owner. You get a physical copy of a book, and that's all. You have only the rights granted to you under fair use doctrine, first sale doctrine, etc. In contrast, a license is a grant of some of those rights to other parties. It doesn't assign away copyright ownership, but it does says that you may, for example, make a copy of my program under the terms defined in the license.
It's worth referencing the difference between a license and a contract here, but that's a whole legal essay in itself, so I'll point to Moglen's writing here, as well as the discussion around the recent Artifex Software, Inc. v. Hancom, Inc.
But yes, I was sloppy on the printed document example. I apologize. Take emailing my mom a PDF instead, which embeds a version of the font program rather than rendering the typeface. Thank you for pointing that out.
I was intentionally giving examples which fell into a legal gray zone, though -- things which a judge would likely rule were okay, but which fell outside of the scope of the license as written. Those are the sorts of things which tend to blow up into expensive litigation. When drafting legal text, you want to leave nothing to being misinterpreted by a user or a judge, and you definitely don't want clauses which go against established law. If I'm a judge reading a contract or a license which has a clause which goes against the law, I can (1) restrict the scope of the clause to what's permissible under the law (2) toss out the clause, (3) toss out the whole license/contract, or (4) do something completely unpredictable. At the very least, if I have a contract or license which falls into a gray zone, I want a severability clause (and key clauses repeated with different scopes, some version clearly within the law, to make sure /something/ is left standing).
Disclaimer: Nothing here constitutes legal advice.
There are many countries in the world. You're making an assumption that in exactly none of them could something crazy like this be enforced. That's a big bet you're making, and a tiny one for GS to include this language.
Licenses should not attempt to optimise for hypothetical legal systems that may exist somewhere and do not follow the laws of logic. "Put it in, just in case" could be used to justify literally any absurdity.
> and a tiny one for GS to include this language.
As a sibling comment by @wegs pointed out:
> [L]egal language like this is just absurdly poorly-written and stupid. Whatever you want legal language to say, you want it to be clear and unambiguous. That protects everyone involved[.]
Which is to say, Goldman Sachs is entirely welcome to spam their license with absurdities. But don't expect anyone else to come along for the ride.
This is why you should always either (a) Use a standard license (b) Hire a good lawyer to draft a license. Don't draft one yourself, and don't get a bad lawyer.
The most basic bar I would have before doing honest business with a bank is that they can do competent legal due diligence. They don't need clever or brilliant lawyers, but at the very least, banks lawyers need to be able to handle routine work without errors. Goldman just flunked that very low bar.
Perhaps they'll fix this, so we have a backup for posterity's sake (and this is okay to post -- legal documents are generally not copyrightable).
If this is too long, please feel free to downvote so it's hidden. I'm not a karma collector. :)
----
Goldman Sachs Restricted Font License A. Background Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC (“Goldman Sachs”) owns the copyright interests in and to a font style entitled “Goldman Sans” (“Licensed Font”). Goldman Sachs is providing this license of the Licensed Font software (the “License”) free of charge as long as it is used in compliance with this License.
B. Definitions A “Font” is a typeface that can be used for text, character display, HTML, style sheets, and the like.; it includes the normal character set, as well as additional font styles such as underlined, bold, and italicized. “Licensed Font Software” refers to the set of files released by Goldman Sachs under this License to the Goldman Sans Font, and may include source files, build scripts and documentation.
C. Grant and Scope of License By reproducing, distributing, publicly displaying or otherwise using the Licensed Font Software, you agree to abide by this License. Anyone who uses the Licensed Font Software is a “User,” regardless of how, where, or from whom the Licensed Font Software is obtained.
Permission is hereby granted to the User, a limited, royalty-free, nonexclusive, and revocable license to use, reproduce, and distribute unmodified copies of the Licensed Font Software, subject to the following conditions:
a. The User may not modify or make derivative works of or sell (by itself or with any other item or software), sub-license, bundle, or embed copies of the Licensed Font Software.
b. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software in any “open source” or other code that would create any obligation for Goldman Sachs to: (i) grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights; (ii) disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances; or (iii) otherwise subject Goldman Sachs to any obligations not expressly set forth in this License.
c. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software to disparage or suggest any affiliation with or endorsement by Goldman Sachs.
d. If a User distributes a copy of the Licensed Font Software, each copy shall bear an appropriate copyright notice in substantially the form of “© 2020 Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC. All rights reserved.” and a copy of this License. The Licensed Font Software must be distributed entirely under this License and must not be distributed under any other license. The requirement for the Licensed Font Software to remain under this License does not apply to any document created using the Licensed Font Software.
e. The License is subject to other prior or future licenses that Goldman Sachs may grant to other parties.
User expressly agrees that all proprietary right, title, and interest in and to and control of the Licensed Font Software are and shall at all times be solely owned by Goldman Sachs and hereby acknowledges that nothing contained in this License shall give User any right, title. or interest in or to the ownership or use of the Licensed Font Software, except the restricted use provided herein.
D. Trademarks “GOLDMAN,” “GOLDMAN SACHS,” and “GOLDMAN SANS” (coll...
but yes, a swing and a miss for this dumb reason.
- Reducing the standard width deviation between letters will also be of great help for mobile, number driven usage - without going full monospace.
- The "u" simply being an inverted "n", the "m" using the same shoulders and stems as the "n are things that go against the premise of a fully legible font. I would revise this.
What do you think?
Goldman Sachs is trying to distract us from something. I wonder what... Something else they are doing, right now? or something they just did?
Let's see Paul Allen's card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY