Adobe font licensing

I saw an alert on the Font Bureau page within the Adobe Fonts site today that all FB fonts will be removed from Adobe Fonts on June 15, 2020. https://fonts.adobe.com/foundries/font-bureau

It was a fluke that I saw it. I agree, this is not good. If this is going to become an issue, they need to at least have a page the lists all of the upcoming fonts to be removed. I’ve been recommending the Adobe Fonts platform to our 300+ users, as many of our files are distributed worldwide, but this is not giving me warm fuzzies.

Oh, as for the PDF question you had, the fonts are fully embedded in that PDF, so those files will be fine. There is no connection to their service and your PDF after it’s created, even if they remove those fonts. You can send that PDF to a user who doesn’t even have Adobe CC apps, for instance, and the fonts will still display correctly. That’s the beauty of PDF. Unfortunately, Adobe is not having such a good day today. Servers down and affecting people worldwide today. Oy vey!!

Wow… ouch! That is troublesome. Mike Rankin also recently wrote about this problem here:

More Fonts Are Being Retired from Creative Cloud

Below is an excerpt from this page: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/removed-fonts.html

I purchase all of the font licenses for our agencies worldwide and 7 days is NOT enough notice. I will have to purchase the fonts, load them on our font server and deploy them, then our artists will have to update the files. The chances are high that I won’t be able to purchase the exact same version of the fonts that were hosted on the Adobe Fonts platform. Different versions often mean kerning and tracking changes within the fonts, which means overset text or text wrap changes. All of our files must go through an FDA legal review, so ANY changes to the placement of the text will cause the project to be rejected and we must start the review process again, which is costly on many levels. This has the potential to be a nightmare for us.

What happens to my active desktop fonts?
Thirty days before the font is removed, we’ll put a notice on the font family page with the removal date and any other details, such as the name of a replacement font family.
If you have a font activated that is scheduled to be removed, we’ll also email you seven days prior to removal to inform you of the upcoming change.
After we remove the font, it will automatically disappear from your list of active fonts, the Fonts menu of the Creative Cloud desktop application, and your desktop software font menus.

What all this ends up increasing is piracy. Now, before readers flame me, be aware I have a FileMaker database of about 1200 software licenses I have purchased and a folder (paper) of a bunch of font purchases, so it’s not like I wear a pirate’s eye cover, or whatever that thing is called. But I can see that if one has been preparing a certain document for years and its common body typeface is going away or otherwise changing to a different foundry with different metrics, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to just send the original OTF (or whatever) files to the customer.

If a foundry would just, say, add $2 to a price that says if the license moves to another company, it’s still available . . . what’s so bad in that? Or just price it that way from the beginning?

The Adobe Fonts platform never gave users access to the original font software for packaging or copying in any way, so that is not an issue (or potential work around for those wearing eye patches – LOL!).

This particular issue seems to be primarily that the agreement they had with a couple of foundries is no longer acceptible to one of the parties involved.

I’m not aware of any instances where the font license is being moved from one foundry to another, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Their info on this mentioned “Alverata PE from TypeTogether was overhauled, retired, and replaced by the family Alverata.” In that case, users don’t have a choice but to update their files using the new version.

Even if we purchased that font outright, this scenario could still cause us issues. We design marketing materials and distribute them to client affiliates around the world to localize for their market. We never include fonts. If the font version we used to design the piece isn’t available for purchase at a later date, that can cause some issues. It’s always difficult to know when it’s best to update vs sit tight with the current version.

I, too, have a FileMaker Pro database I created that stores all 1886 of my font purchases from the past 23 years. It’s like a pet — I would be lost without it! :)