The article is obviously mainly referring to font files under desktop font licenses that certainly don't usually allow publishing the files on Github or serving them as part of your site.
(While irrelevant: As for the technical difference or lack of between the two, from a license drafting perspective, it wouldn't really matter since you could easily write in the distinction to eg. the allowed purpose part of the license grant.)
> You set up your new web project, plunk your webfonts alongside other assets like images and JavaScript libraries, and commit your stuff to a public repo on Github. Not realising that this violates the license of the commercial fonts, you now made them available to anyone who can use Github’s search function. It happens — apparently.
> So, what to do when you want to use commercial fonts and be legit about it?
> Long story short, you can’t commit them to a public repository. There’s really no way around it: if you are not allowed to share the font with folks who don’t fall under its license, you can’t make it a part of your repo.
> Your options are to go for a private repo, or keep a note in your public repo telling the folks who’ll be using your project to license the fonts and add ‘em themselves. Stick your assets/fonts directory in a .gitignore so you’ll never accidentally commit them, and Bob’s your uncle.
It clearly isn't obvious. It seems explicit to me that the author is talking about all commercial fonts and that NONE of them should be in public github repos.
For an article that spends such a long time talking about how they searched for filenames, there is very little time spent exploring the actual copyright implications of using licensed fonts in opensource software or .
(While irrelevant: As for the technical difference or lack of between the two, from a license drafting perspective, it wouldn't really matter since you could easily write in the distinction to eg. the allowed purpose part of the license grant.)