Fonts seem like a really interesting edge case for that argument, because a font is in some ways a mathematical formula, especially a TeX font, much more so than what came before, but it’s also an artwork. Absolutely. It absolutely requires great artistry. So the other part of this is that artists are traditionally not paid like scientists. Scientists are supported by the National Science Foundation to discover science, which benefits the human race. Artists, or font designers, are not supported by the National Font Foundation to develop fonts that are going to be beneficial to the human race. Fonts are beneficial to the human race, they just don’t traditionally get supported that way. Ⅰ don’t know why. They’re both important aspects of our life. It’s just that one part has traditionally gotten funded by a royalty type mechanism and the other by public welfare grants for the whole country.
Perhaps that has something to do with the absolute necessity in science to have open access to the results of others, that if you did science in a closed, proprietary framework that the disadvantages would be so clear.
With fonts, it was pretty clear to me.
Aus einem Advogato.org Interview mit TeX-Vater Prof. Donald E. Knuth.
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