Microsoft TrueType core fonts for the webare apparently no more, at least from Microsoft’s distribution site. Microsoft says that the fonts were being "abused" (take that, you rogue font!), and decided thatenough was enough–you can no longer get them directly from Microsoft. Microsoft’s core fonts include: Georgia, Times New Roman, Arial, Arial Black, Impact, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Andale Mono, Courier New, and the hideous Comic Sans MS.
"Most users who wanted the fonts have downloaded them already," a company spokesman wrote in an email to ExtremeTech. "They ship with recent OS’s – Windows XP and Mac OS (via Internet Explorer). Microsoft has also found that the downloads were being abused – repackaged, modified and shipped with commercial products in violation of the EULA [licensing agreement]."
In essence, Microsoft is reacting to certain Linux distributions which are packaging the fonts with their offerings. Yet, according to their original EULA, the fonts can be distributed in unaltered form, which means that siteslike this onewill probably continue to distribute the fonts outside of a commercial setting.
There’s some very good commentary on the Linux community’s need to develop open source TrueType fonts overat /.that’s worth checking out. Nice looking, anti-aliased fonts on Linux are still a problem (/me dons flame retardant suit), and putting together a suave font set is more difficult than you might think (which helps to explain why Microsoft supposedly paid seven figures to the designer of Tahoma, Verdana, and some of the other fonts). There’s also some follow-upcommentary at OSNews, where the story broke first. Thanks to Dmitri Zdorov for the news.
