In reply to The Sorry State of Native App Typography Licensing:
For just displaying text, though, I find it more of an arbitrary distinction from any other use of 'displaying text' in the analog world.
Yes, in this respect the analogy is closer to that of webfont. But if part of the complaint re app embedding licensing for fonts is that it is too complicated, trying to make a licensing distinction between apps that display text and apps in which text is created seems unlikely to simplify anything.
Mind you, I don't think simplifying the licensing of fonts for app embedding is necessarily in anyone's interests, and I'm surprised to see some foundries trying to provide generic pricing for such licensing. Different apps have different capabilities and hence different needs, not to mention different value. It seems much more like the custom font development market in which I operate than the retail font licensing market, and I would expect any license agreement in such a market to be individually negotiated and subject to a particular agreement (as would be the case for most other embedded code). I understand that app developers might appreciate the convenience of a single license and pricing model, but that would inevitably mean that some of them would be paying more then they might otherwise, while others would be getting a great deal that fails to reward the foundry for the kind of value the fonts add to the product.