Today we're launching the Google Font API. I've been working over the past couple of months with highly talented font designers to get a great collection of fonts released as open source. Almost all the fonts are under the Open Font License, and in our discussions I've been sensing a huge amount of momentum behind this license.

Obviously, the main reason we're doing this is to have a richer set of fonts for the web. But since the fonts are all open source, they can be used for lots of other things. I'm confident this collection will shortly show up in Linux distribution. We've created a Google Code project to host the fonts in the Google Font Directory, many of which contain FontForge or FontLab source. I want to run that in open source style, and invite people working on packaging fonts for Linux and other open source projects to help curate the project.

I'm also looking forward to hearing from more font designers. We've been working directly with designers to get the fonts for the initial launch, but we want to add many more, including both existing open-source fonts (possibly with a little work to meet quality and glyph coverage goals). If you're working on a font you'd like to see in the Google Font Directory, you can use this spreadsheet form, or get in touch with me directly. Please bear with me if I don't respond immediately, though - I'm expecting to be swamped.

It's hugely exciting to be working on fonts full time now, with a great team. I'm looking forward to some great collaboration with the open source and font worlds now that we're out in the world.