I brought this up because of the exceptional quality of the work. While limited to web, I believe the findings are interesting enough to be shared with broader public.
Overall that's a good point, though, and for this reason I do this with only select few of my students. :)
The free trial version has a couple of fixed weights to try. It's missing all the advanced features (variable weight etc.) but it's enough to get an impression and to use it on a daily basis to see if you like it.
I asked around about this particular term. It seems it's strict like that because looser wording would allow resales in certain parts of the world.
That said, I see no problem in subsetting or customizing the font especially in personal context. The website even provides tooling for this purpose so it's definitely within the license since you are literally creating your own custom version on the fly.
I hope this clarifies why it seems to be a standard clause for fonts.
1. https://www.siidorow.com/master_Siidorow_Mikael_2026.pdf 2. https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/items/e71b388a-a015-4f01-b7f9-530e...