“Open Source Fonts Are Love Letters to the Design Community: Typefaces That Be Freely Used and Modified Give Others a Chance to Hone Their Craft—And Share Valuable Feedback”, 2020-03-28 (; backlinks; similar):
…Even if designers don’t contribute improvements to a font directly, companies can benefit from making their work open source. For example, Adobe Type senior manager Daniel Rhatigan says releasing its Source super-family of fonts [monospace, sans, serif] as open source has enabled the company to test new typography technologies like “variable fonts”, which make it easy for a designer to adjust the weight of a typeface, before rolling those technologies into other products.
In other cases, open source fonts help support other aspects of a company’s business. For example, Google Fonts program manager Dave Crossland says many of the fonts Google has funded most recently are designed for under-supported languages in developing countries. These efforts buttress Google’s “Next Billion Users” initiative, which aims to bring more people in developing countries online. Better support for more languages means more users, and ultimately, more money for Google.
The incentives to create open source fonts weren’t always obvious. In early 2009, a graphic designer and programmer named Micah Rich came across a forum post by a student who was interested in knowing more about how fonts worked. The student asked whether there was a professional quality open source font that they could learn from. The replies weren’t kind. “There were like 20 pages of professional type designers saying ‘This is our livelihood, how dare you ask us to work for free?’” Rich says.