Commercial Development of Libre Fonts
"I want to design type full-time, how do I earn a living while making my work libre?"
This document aims to provide an exhaustive list of all the ways that people can get paid for developing libre fonts.
Hopefully, other projects and contributors will find this helpful in figuring out the best options for them.
Any project might involve several kinds of funding categories.
The list below is roughly ordered from small to large.
Each funding category links to several real examples, usually from the software domain (using topical articles or pages wherever possible instead of just a project's homepage.)
This document began as a fork of https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand
Table of Contents
- Donation button
- Bounties
- Crowdfunding (one-time)
- Crowdfunding (recurring)
- Books and merchandise
- Advertising & sponsorships
- Get hired by a company to work on project
- Start a project while currently employed
- Grants
- Consulting
- Paid support
- SaaS
- Copyleft + paid license
- Open core
- Foundations & consortiums
- Venture capital
- Restricted license
*"personal effort" notes when a funding effort was led by an individual, not a project
Donation button
Stick a donation button on your site. Stripe and PayPal are examples of services you can use to accept donations.
Pros
- Few strings attached
- Little work involved: "set it and forget it"
Cons
- Usually not much money unless you have dedicated fundraising efforts
- Need an entity to accept donations, which may take a fee for doing so. Examples are Stripe and PayPal.
- To make donations tax-free for the person/organization who is donating, may need a legally charitable entity (in the United States, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity) to accept donations. Software Freedom Conservancy and NumFOCUS are examples. Harder for individuals or international donations to manage
- Sometimes not clear who “deserves” money in a project or how it gets distributed. An entity like OpenCollective may help with this.
Case Studies
Bounties
List a set of development tasks with specific prices attached ("fix this bug and collect $100")
Pros
- Open to community participation
- Money is tied to doing specific work (more like paying for service than donations)
Cons
- Can create perverse incentives in a project (low quality PRs, distracting priorities)
- Conflicts can arise over whether work fulfills a bounty
- Usually not much money per bounty (~<$500)
- Doesn’t provide recurring revenue
Case Studies
Crowdfunding (one-time)
If you have a specific project milestone you'd like to implement (such as the initial development and "Version 1.0" release of a typeface) a one-time crowdfunding campaign can help raise the funds you need.
Both individuals and companies might be willing to donate to your campaign.
This category is distinct from ongoing project work.
Pros
- Few strings attached
- Can be easy for an individual to legally manage via crowdfunding platform sites like Kickstarter
Cons
- Lots of work involved to market campaign
- Usually has to be tied to concrete outcome, perks
- Usually not that much money (~$50K for one time)
- Companies not always comfortable donating to campaigns
Case Studies
Crowdfunding (recurring)
Since a font is never done, and your living expenses are on-going, a recurring crowdfunding campaign can fund on-going project work by asking customers to make a monthly or annual financial commitment that renews indefinitely.
Those who use your work regularly and are eager to see updates (including both individuals and companies) can fund your work.
Pros
Cons
- Harder to get commitments to recurring donations (often requires preexisting brand/reputation)
- Need to explain and deliver concrete outcomes & perks that customers get for their recurring payments
- Usually not that much money (~$1-4K monthly)
- Companies not always comfortable donating to campaigns
Case Studies
Books and merchandise
Self-publishing is easier than ever, and those interested in your work may like to purchase books about it.
There is even mass-market appeal for books about type, if they make good gifts.
In addition to selling books, you can sell merchandise (T-shirts, hoodies, mugs.)
Pros
- Outcome not tied to project work itself, so you retain creative freedom
- Can serve as marketing for the project itself
- Can be recurring source of revenue after initial development
Cons
- Often not a significant source of revenue
- Can distract from core development of project
- Merchandise can have up-front costs
Case Studies
Advertising & sponsorships
If your project has a large audience, you can sell sponsorships to advertisers who might want to reach them.
You probably have a very targeted audience (ex. if you have a Python project, you can assume your audience is likely people who are technically familiar with Python), so use that to your advantage.
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
Cons
- Need large enough audience to justify sponsorships
- Need to manage trust and transparency with user base (ex. no tracking)
- Can be a lot of work to find and manage clients
- Can involve ethical concerns about marketing
- Can introduce a conflict of interest; making controversial changes could result in losing sponsors/advertisers
Case Studies
Get hired by a company to work on project
Companies sometimes hire full-time type designers into their design team staff.
Find a company that uses libre fonts, and contribute to them as part of the work week.
Often this is a split arrangement (ex. 50% company work, 50% project work).
Alternatively, if you have an idea for a new project, find a company that would be interested in using what you produce.
In these situations, having demonstrated experience you can point to will be very helpful.
Pros
- Taps into those who have resources (i.e. companies)
- Can be well-aligned with company needs
- Steady income
Cons
- Usually involves “getting lucky”: no clear, repeatable path to finding this arrangement
- Project already needs to be well-known and used
- Person not contributing directly to company’s bottom line, which makes them expendable
- Governance issues, company could have undue influence over project
- Can affect project dynamics + balance
Case Studies
Do it as a side project
Many libre projects started as employee side projects.
Starting it as a side project can be a great way to incubate the idea.
If you pursue this path, make sure you understand your company's policy on libre culture.
Some companies encourage employees to contribute to libre culture during working hours.
Some might treat your libre work as a company project.
Some might have policies prohibiting such activity.
Don't assume anything; ask someone at your company before starting.
Pros
- Freedom to test new ideas without worrying about salary
- Can be well-aligned with company needs
- Suitable for newer, experimental ideas
Cons
- Need to do it as a side project or be approved to work on it during salaried time
- Risk of undue company influence
- Can lead to complicated governance later down the line
Case Studies
Grants
Grants are effectively large donations that do not require repayment.
Often the grantmaker receives other benefits from giving you the grant, such as access to you, demonstration of impact, a report of your work, or tax benefits.
Grants can come from many places, including companies, software foundations, philanthropic foundations, and the government.
The technical and legal aspects of a grant vary greatly depending on where it comes from.
For example, a company might give you a "grant" but legally treat it as a consulting invoice.
A philanthropic foundation can only make grants to nonprofits, so you would need to be a nonprofit yourself, or (more commonly) find a nonprofit to sponsor you.
If you're unfamiliar with grants, the best way to understand how grants work is to talk to someone who has received one before.
Some examples of grant recipients are listed below.*
Pros
- Fewer strings attached
- Guaranteed money can help project focus for an unbroken period of time
- Gives project room to breathe and experiment
Cons
- There aren’t many software-related grantmakers (philanthropic, gov’t, corporate)
- Grants are finite. Still need to find sustainability beyond the life of a grant
Case Studies
Work as a Typographer
Working as a font user, rather than a font maker, can enable contributing to libre fonts as part of using them.
If your project is popular, you can also offer typography consulting services around the project itself.
For example, a client might pay you to make a WordPress theme for them, or build a brand identity that uses the font, or train them on how to use it.
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
Cons
- Consulting requires human power, doesn’t scale well (except for rare outliers)
- Business needs can distract from writing code or other tasks related to the project itself
- Can be at odds with making software simple to use
- Project needs to be sufficiently popular that people are willing to pay for related services
Case Studies
Paid support
In this model, the font is freely available, but users need to pay to receive support from the project's maintainers.
That might mean charging for access to the issue tracker, office hours, a community Slack, or an SLA (service-level agreement).
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
Cons
- Can be at odds with the fact that fonts are simple to use
- Project needs to be sufficiently popular that people are willing to pay
- Maintainers don't necessarily want to offer professional support
Case Studies
Web Fonts API
Fonts can be offered as a Web Fonts API, a specific kind of "SaaS" (Software as a Service).
In this model, the fonts are libre, and you offer paid hosting that makes it convenient to use the fonts.
There is currently no off-the-shelf web fonts API server software, so developing that software may be time-consuming or expensive.
Typically, customers paying for SaasS also get priority support.
Pros
- Can build community around a font and make money off of services for hosting
- Allows project to focus on users and as needs grow to help businesses adopt the font
- Can scale by number of users
Cons
- Self hosting works well enough for many
- Being libre, your project is likely to be hosted by Google Fonts
- Often means the hosting needs to be cheaper than hiring a dev to run the project for you
- “Two tiers” of product support can make free users unhappy
Case Studies
Copyleft + paid license
In the software domain, since the GPL would require developers to make their entire program libre, many developers avoid GPL code but are happy to use non-copyleft code (such as MIT or Apache 2.0) in their proprietary software.
So, some libre projects use a copyleft license by default, but they sell "additional permissions," permissive licenses, or even proprietary licenses, to those developers who want to bypass copyleft requirements.
The OFL doesn't require users to make their entire documents libre, so this is only possible with GPL fonts.
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
- Can scale well if successful
Cons
- At odds with making fonts truly freely accessible
- Project needs to be big enough that customer need exists
- Only works for GPL fonts
Case Studies
Open core
Under an open core model, some styles of the family are libre, but others are proprietary and available only to paying users.
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
- Can scale well if successful
Cons
- At odds with making fonts freely accessible
- “Two tiers” of product support can make free users unhappy
- May require a CLA (Contributor License Agreement) in order to accept source submissions from outside contributors while retaining the ability to relicense those submissions under the proprietary license
Case Studies
Foundations & consortiums
Not a revenue model, more a tax optimization
A foundation is a legal entity that can accept and/or disburse donations.
Because their purpose is not to make profits, they can be a great choice to signal neutrality and steward a project.
In the US, foundations are either 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) or 501(c)(6) (trade consortium).
Many software foundations are 501(c)(6) because 501(c)(3) require demonstrating a charitable purpose, which can be more difficult in software.
Pros
- Neutrality. Foundation protects the code and helps steward community
- Influence distributed across multiple donors
- Can legitimize project, companies might feel more comfortable giving to foundations than individuals
Cons
- Only really worth it for big projects
- Difficult to set up for IRS reasons (many do 501(c)(6) instead of 501(c)(3)), restrictions on what you can do
- Requires serious community effort and diverse skills (you still need to fundraise after setting up the entity!)
Case Studies
Venture capital
Not a revenue model
Venture capital is a form of funding for high growth businesses.
Unlike a bank loan or other forms of debt financing, venture capitalists take equity (a percent ownership in your business) in exchange for funding.
Unlike taking out a loan, you don't have to repay your creditors if your business tanks.
If you do succeed, however, you should expect to return capital to your investor at a multiple.*
Venture capital is "high risk high reward": VCs are more risk tolerant than banks, but they also expect a large payoff if you are successful. If you plan on raising venture capital, you should set up a business entity structured as a C Corp, preferably in Delaware. If you're unfamiliar with the venture capital process, the best place to start is by reaching out to similar founders who have successfully raised venture.
Pros
- Institutional support can be helpful for growing a business
- Large amounts of capital available
Cons
- Venture capital comes with expectations of an exit (i.e. returning the money to investors at a multiple). History suggests this is structurally difficult to achieve for open source businesses. Venture Capital isn't actually a business model but only investment capital for those who have some other business model for future revenue.
- Venture capital can change motivations and distract from priorities
- Unavailable to non-profits
Case Studies
Restricted license
Restricted licenses are not libre because they do not meet the definition of a free cultural works.
The source files may or may not be made available (either publicly, or to customers who pay for a license).
The license limits the freedoms to redistribute and modify or to use the fonts commercially.
Pros
- Business model aligned with something people are willing to pay for
- Potential to scale well if successful
Cons
- Not actually open source (so may fail to achieve many or most of the benefits of open source)
- Can be controversial, erode community trust
Case Studies