In reply to Best for Web bodytext:
As old as Humankind.
I don't consider myself a capitalist (quite the contrary) but the relevance of materialism cannot be brushed aside. In fact materialism is the covert heart of the open-source philosophy, because it's all about possessing things without giving up things in return. The altruists (like Dave Crossland and maybe yourself) are the priests driving the bandwagons, but the people jumping on them just want the free ride. The priests however would be out of a job without them.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that one should only do things for money (if anything I myself spend too much time helping people and not making enough money) it's that people shouldn't repurpose their own desire to save money into a belief/delusion that others should make free things for them.
a font that is both excellent, and, that lots of people want to use.
I'm no miracle worker.
You can hold me responsible for flaws in my fonts, but not for flaws in society.
It's neither the popularity nor the free/open-source nature of Oswald* that causes "long-term" type designers to see flaws in it. We see flaws in it because there are flaws in it. More to the point: if you were to invest more time into it there would be fewer flaws. Except you don't live in a barrel.
* http://typophile.com/node/98761
hhp