Looking at the Wikipedia page, as well as the conversations given in the proof: "Consolas used to have bad copyright but I made it open source!" and "Consolas now has twice the amount of designers it used to have.", it does look like some sort of twisted joke. My bad for this, we still have to hear from Microsoft but I don't think this is legit.
WTF does that even mean ?!
There's multiple references to it being "open source" but no license to back it.
2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft: Consolas Bold Version 7.00 Consolas is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies Microsoft Corporation Luc(as) de Groot http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts http://fontfabrik.com Microsoft supplied font. You may use this font to create, display, and print content as permitted by the license terms or terms of use, of the Microsoft product, service, or content in which this font was included. You may only (i) embed this font in content as permitted by the embedding restrictions included in this font; and (ii) temporarily download this font to a printer or other output device to help print content. Any other use is prohibited. http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.aspx
Another file (consolasboldmod8.2.sfd) has this text: "Copyright: (c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved." which I believe is not open source either.
Some files have empty copyright, some files have string "Copyright: Consolas is rightfully public domain it isn't copyrighted by Microsoft or anything". I believe there should be some additional cleanup work to be done.
It's also not open source in the sense that there's no source -- he's just using the repository as a dropbox for each final version of the compiled font file. The uncompiled versions of each character aren't there, and I can't track changes through the commit history. Here's an example of what an open source font repo should look like: https://github.com/konpa/devicon/
If this really is from Microsoft (which I'm doubting more and more) and they're trying to make Consolas open source, I'm all for it, but there's more to open sourcing something than just dumping it onto GitHub.
If you use consolas with cmd.exe on Windows this new font will break it. the font is stuck in italic mode in the console. for anyone foolish enough to install this font, first delete all Consolas fonts from Control panel. then gather correct fonts using virtual machine:
copy C:\Windows\Fonts\consola.ttf .
copy C:\Windows\Fonts\consolab.ttf .
copy C:\Windows\Fonts\consolai.ttf .
copy C:\Windows\Fonts\consolaz.ttf .
I've to admit I'm a user of Consolas and actually prefer it over all these alternatives (https://app.programmingfonts.org/). One reason: I like the italics. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Open source is the future, whether you like it or not. Consolas is one of the things that became open source as a result of future.
It seems like he made it open source without permission...
Obvious /s of course