[microflash]

Looks interesting.

> The Licensee may not modify, translate, adapt, alter, decompile, disassemble, decrypt, reverse engineer, change or alter the embedding bits, the font name, legal notices contained in the font software, nor seek to discover the source code of the font data, convert into another font format, create bitmaps, add or subtract any glyphs, symbols or accents, or any other derivative works based on the electronic data in this product.

This is why I haven’t bought it. I like to subset fonts to reduce the size. Any font license that prohibits this just gets ignored by me, no matter how good it is.

[mistercow]

IANAL, but isn't most of that unenforceable in the US? Typefaces have their own weird place in IP law which is different from copyright.

[xyzzy_plugh]

IANAL but the distributed files are software and I do not interpret that section to be unenforceable. If you agree to the EULA then subset the font and serve it on your website it's pretty straightforward to enforce.

AIUI in the US you can't do much to protect the visual shape of the font e.g. I can hand-trace your letters and make my own font and do whatever I want without issue.

[abcd_f]

Yeah, sounds like you can't even screenshot it.

[bebraw]

I asked around about this particular term. It seems it's strict like that because looser wording would allow resales in certain parts of the world.

That said, I see no problem in subsetting or customizing the font especially in personal context. The website even provides tooling for this purpose so it's definitely within the license since you are literally creating your own custom version on the fly.

I hope this clarifies why it seems to be a standard clause for fonts.