Ubuntu's font beta sparks discussions about open font development

In any case it's certainly no easy feat bringing proprietary font design culture and FLOSS release often, release early together...

Fonts are really a different kind of software, reapplying the usual best practises for software falls flat.

Tried and true best practises around collaborative libre/open font design are only forming. The big discussion around issues related to preferred DVCS tree structure, cross-toolkit formats, buildpath, automated builds and test-suites, metadata, naming, branching and handling patches, style and coverage boundaries, artistic integrity, etc is still ongoing. The discussions at the last LGM are just the start of the work needed in dealing with these issues.