Font management in the cloud

[Ralf Herrmann]

What do you guys think about this new concept of managing fonts in the cloud? FontYou ist starting a service like this for the masses and moving font management to the browser and the cloud is a development one can see with other font manager makers as well. 

Would you use it? Does it make sense to download fonts from an external service into your browser even though you might already have them on your machine and a local app could work with them so much faster?

I am also wondering what foundries and type designers think about this. @Mark Simonson, @Dezcom, @James Montalbano? Because while the user only establishes a private and encrypted connection to the service, the user’s complete font library is uploaded and stored in the cloud in order to be managed there. This sort of use will probably not be covered or even mentioned in most font EULAs. It’s kind of a server use (which is mostly prohibited), but also just some kind of external storage. 

And it also puts much more focus on the user in a EULA, not on “devices” anymore, because with such a FontYou account, it wouldn’t matter anymore on what device you are. 

 

[Mark Simonson]

My standard desktop license is based on the number of users, not machines or devices. There is a clause against storing the fonts on a public server, but a private server is allowed. As long as the fonts are only being used by licensed users, there are few restrictions.

[davelab6]

A number of similar efforts have already been done - eg http://lettercaseapp.com/ - but I think that most type designers will prefer to won the 'font locker' themselves, like https://fontstand.com