Hey, Bill and Steve, open up those fonts

Jeff Croft posts an open letter to Microsoft and Apple asking for a little relief for Internet creatives: putting new Web-friendly typefaces into service across platforms and browsers.

"At some point (sorry I can’t be more specific, it’s a bit of a moving target), Microsoft will release Vista, the next version of Windows. Bundled along with it is a set of new typefaces Microsoft has commissioned. These fonts are no match for Adobe’s Frutiger and Univers, but they are quite nice, nonetheless. Certainly they’re far better than the typefaces we web designers can currently rely on being installed on the vast majority of PCs and Macs (a list which, for practical purposes, isn’t much longer than Verdana, Georgia, and Arial)."

From what I have seen, yes they are far better -- and designed from the first pixel to be easy to read on digital displays, with or without subpixel antialiasing (aka ClearType).

So I join Croft's request. Steve and Bill, how about cutting a deal and pushing those fonts out with coming OS and browser updates?