Great news today for GPU-accelerated text rendering:

"""
I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain. ...

To aid in implementations of the Slug algorithm, reference vertex and pixel shaders based on the actual code used in the Slug Library have been posted in a new GitHub repository and made available under the MIT license. ...
"""

Thank you, @EricLengyel!

https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html