One of my major prompts for think­ing about the essen­tial qual­i­ties of open source has been the Google Web Fonts project, which claims to be a library of open-source fonts. I design type. I worked at Red Hat. I was intrigued by the con­cept. There’s no rea­son open-source fonts can’t exist. But on closer inspec­tion, Google Web Fonts are not “open source” in any mean­ing­ful sense.

Selec­tive edit­ing dis­torts ideas. Many have heard Stew­art Brand’s famous obser­va­tion that “infor­ma­tion wants to be free.” This phrase, stand­ing alone, is often cited in sup­port of the argu­ment that con­straints on dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion are futile or immoral.