Silverlight open source font replacement for Segoe

Question

I'm currently building a LOB application in Silverlight 4. I've been considering the question of typography for the application.

After some experimentation on the design side the font that people like is Segoe UI. Now I can embed this font and although the font is freely available in Windows we don’t have distribution rights for this font.

I am looking for an open source font visually equivalent of the Segoe family that can be freely distributed.

Does such a font exist?

Answer 1

The best answer that I have found is demonstrated in Microsoft's sample themes for Silverlight (can be found here).

Essentially you specify the set of fonts you'd like in descending order ensuring that there is an available font on all target platforms (ie. Segoe UI probably won't be on a Mac or a Windows XP box).

<FontFamily x:Key="DefaultFontFamily">Segoe UI, Lucida Sans Unicode, Verdana</FontFamily>

<Style TargetType="Button">
  <Setter Property="FontFamily" Value="{StaticResource DefaultFontFamily}"/>
  <Setter Property="FontSize" Value="12"/>
</Style>

Answer 2

Google Web Fonts has a font called Open Sans which is very very close to Segoe UI:

http://www.google.com/webfonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Open+Sans