This story is almost seven years old. These guys settled their dispute and moved on. Frere Jones now has a very successful type company of his own. He's not exactly living in a van by the river
I’m FJ’s side in this whole saga, but you’re minimizing Jonathan Hoefler’s contributions a bit: it’s true that Frere-Jones made Gotham, but Hoefler has made many iconic typefaces as well. Hoefler Text, obviously, but my favorite is probably Champion Gothic (think “Straight Outta Compton”).
It’s not Wozniak/Jobs situation where one of them was a creative genius and the other a cold-blooded businessman: they’re both creative geniuses. One of them just screwed the other one over.
It's been decades since the Beatles broke up, but there's still people who (fairly or otherwise) nurse a grudge about it. Sure, nobody would ever claim H&FJ were "bigger than Jesus", but at least in a certain demographic they were pretty big.
And one of Frere-Jones' type designers had this to say about the whole thing:
https://twitter.com/ninastoessinger/status/14382710868446822...