Joy, I'm not saying all free font sites are stocked with nothing but clones .... but I think I'd be safe in saying that most ... not all fonts found on the free sites are clones or derived work that started out as someone's commercial font.
In fairness, there are certainly a large number of Fontographer and FontLab owners out there that have added in their own original fonts. Also, in fairness, I would point out that the US courts set the rules on this making it legal to create and distribute clones. So if you see a font you like, you're legal in using it.
Ethically, my line gets drawn at the point that I see that a font is a dead on match for a copyrighted font.
In the recent thread that involved the Duchess / Bellevue font, I would not personally download and use Duchess. I would purchase and charge the client for Bellevue. But that's a personal decision. The client specified Duchess and it is legal to download that font and use it.
My comments about clones=stolen were emotionally based and should be read as such. I not only lost out on my investment in becoming a type dealer but I also watched as lots of people I knew and many whom I called friend lost their livelihoods, their businesses or their jobs as a result of cloning. That doesn't necessarily mean that anyone should ignore what has become widespread normal behavior or put themselves at a competitive disadvantage by adding in the costs of font acquisition when free equivilent versions are available.
