The Null Device

Microsoft discontinues free fonts

Microsoft discontinues free fonts, because they come with Windows XP and MacOS (the two legitimate operating systems) already, and thus in Redmond's book, there is no legitimate reason for anybody to not have them. So unfortunately, Penguinheads and the like will have to make do without Comic Sans from now on. Oh, the humanity. (via cos)

There are 5 comments on "Microsoft discontinues free fonts":

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com/vm/ Thu Aug 15 14:56:56 2002

Actually, one impression I seemed to get was that Redmond was annoyed with Linux vendors redistributing the fonts with the EULA intact, as specified in the EULA. This may have been the "abuse" some flack was referring to. "Oh no! The evil Linux people are redistributing the fonts in accordance with our EULA! Those sneaky bastards!". SO basically, Redmond being paranoid fucktards again.

Yeah, so monstrosities like Comic Sans, Arial, and Impact are gone from the M$ site, but so are decent ones like Georgia, Trebuchet, etc. Not that good, but then that relatively loose EULA (ha-ha!) does mean that you can still get them elsewhere legitimately, such as: http://beebo.org/core-fonts/

Posted by: Bill Gates http://www.microsoft.com Thu Aug 15 15:42:47 2002

Curses! Foiled again... Drat, drat and double-drat!

Posted by: richard http:// Thu Aug 15 23:46:55 2002

Is there any easy way to get the fonts out of the .exe/.sit.hqx to use on Linux?

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Fri Aug 16 04:12:34 2002

There is a Debian package which you point at the fonts and it unpacks/installs them. I think the .exe files are just Microsoft CAB files encapsulated in an executable, and there's a CAB extractor for Linux.

Posted by: richard http:// Sun Aug 18 00:53:36 2002

http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php3