If you wan’t to use FOSS I get it, I want to. But when it comes to professionnal workflow you sometimes have to put your ego on the side. When I tried to ditch the Adobe Suite, the Free(dom) alternatives didn’t worked for me or the proprietary alternatives were simply better.
Then, I would argue, the alternative isn’t to sign petitions to make the corporate guys make their proprietary stuff available on FOSS operating systems. The alternative is to contribute to the FOSS alternatives in order to make them as good as the proprietary.
I’m not saying that you in particular haven’t contributed (either financially or developmentally). I don’t know you, so this isn’t particularly directed at you.
But in general, the “FOSS isn’t as good as proprietary stuff” crowd has overwhelmingly never actually tried to fund or contribute to the development of the software itself and their complaints amount to “Why isn’t my free thing as good as the thing they make me pay for?”
In which case the answer is “of course it isn’t…you’re telling me the software developed on the evenings and weekends by enthusiasts doing it in the spare time for NO money isn’t as polished as a fully funded business software!? NO WAY!!! I’M SHOOKETH!!!”
The alternative to the (perceived) quality disparity between FOSS and Proprietary isn’t to go begging at the Corporations doorstep; it’s to make the FOSS alternatives good enough to take the throne of “industry standard” away from the corporations.
It’s not impossible…hell, Blender is the poster child for pretty much doing exactly that. It’s not the “industry standard”, but it’s accepted in the industry in ways that GIMP and Inkscape still aren’t. And the reason is because it’s good enough to be there.
I agree with you, but there’s two sides of the coin.
I would rather pay for a finished product that is good. Sure I can download Linux for free, but I’d rather pay for it. I’d rather support teams that are putting out a product to ensure it is the best it can be and be continually maintained.
FOSS doesn’t have to be free. Nor should it be.
However when projects get organized like that they become organizations. Organizations become businesses. And that’s fine. Let’s support them so they can eat and feed their kids.
So it begs the question, if I feel that way about them is it fine to support non open source orgs and software? Of course it is.
So it basically comes down to the complaining that the software is not good enough.
Of course “good enough” isn’t binary, so if its on the threshold of usability I use it and if its severely lacking then I don’t. No big deal.
If its free, then there is no reason to complain regardless. If you’re paying for it, I think your opinion has a bit more weight.
Of course there’s still a scale. If it’s so far removed from usability then I just don’t buy it. Windows is a good example of that.
But if its close, voicing your opinion that you want certain features is more than fine. It doesn’t remove your support. Wanting Affinity on Linux is a fine desire. If they haven’t said they aren’t going to then asking isn’t a complaint. It’s a want.
I use Affinity because its the best solution I can find. I would love to have it on Linux. Maybe one day it will happen, but I’m not holding my breath.
Supporting Affinity in hopes that they make it better for me (for my preferred platform) is OK, because I’m finding a way to use the product that suits me today. If that way becomes too much hassle tomorrow, I’ll move on. But if they make it easy for me to stay with them then I won’t.
But either way, supporting Gimp won’t make it Affinity. It’ll just make Gimp a better Gimp.
I guess it boils down to, do you support something that isn’t what you want in hopes it becomes what you want it to be or do you support something that is exactly what you want, hoping it will go to where you want it?
Sorry I rambled on there (I’m tired). I do agree with you but there’s a counter point I also agree with. I don’t think they are exclusive.
I agree with you.
My dream is that every public school should use and contribute to FOSS and FOSH, but I’m an utopiste. Honestly I wish Serif would at least free some of its codebase but that’s very unlikely. I would like to have these proprietary software as I still rely on them for my workflow on a GNU/Linux machine rather than macOS and that sounds more reasonnable for a private company building private code and selling licences. Today it’s some of the few software that I can’t run on GNU/Linux to ditch a proprietary OS for work.
I have finally ditched Windows years ago after living my whole childhood in that proprietary crappy spyware environment and did tried many FOSS tools for professionnal work and I do use some (PenPot, blender, OBS, Thunderbird, VSCodium (and Zed a bit), LibreOffice, Nextcloud, UltimakerCura and Signal to name a few).
Unfortunately I still do rely on proprietary software (and these rely on proprietary OS) and yeah there is a reason for that : I need to get the work done. They have the money proprietary licence advantage over FOSS tools of course but hey a small part of the money I make thanks to these proprietary tools are sent to foss projects I want to support. It’s not as big as I wish and I don’t have enough time nor skills to contribute as much as I want to the Free World in general but I do my part and it has grown over the years.
I would prefer relying on proprietary solution on a free OS than relying on proprietary software that rely on proprietary OS. That’s why I signed this (probably useless) petition.
Then, I would argue, the alternative isn’t to sign petitions to make the corporate guys make their proprietary stuff available on FOSS operating systems. The alternative is to contribute to the FOSS alternatives in order to make them as good as the proprietary.
I’m not saying that you in particular haven’t contributed (either financially or developmentally). I don’t know you, so this isn’t particularly directed at you.
But in general, the “FOSS isn’t as good as proprietary stuff” crowd has overwhelmingly never actually tried to fund or contribute to the development of the software itself and their complaints amount to “Why isn’t my free thing as good as the thing they make me pay for?”
In which case the answer is “of course it isn’t…you’re telling me the software developed on the evenings and weekends by enthusiasts doing it in the spare time for NO money isn’t as polished as a fully funded business software!? NO WAY!!! I’M SHOOKETH!!!”
The alternative to the (perceived) quality disparity between FOSS and Proprietary isn’t to go begging at the Corporations doorstep; it’s to make the FOSS alternatives good enough to take the throne of “industry standard” away from the corporations.
It’s not impossible…hell, Blender is the poster child for pretty much doing exactly that. It’s not the “industry standard”, but it’s accepted in the industry in ways that GIMP and Inkscape still aren’t. And the reason is because it’s good enough to be there.
I agree with you, but there’s two sides of the coin.
I would rather pay for a finished product that is good. Sure I can download Linux for free, but I’d rather pay for it. I’d rather support teams that are putting out a product to ensure it is the best it can be and be continually maintained.
FOSS doesn’t have to be free. Nor should it be.
However when projects get organized like that they become organizations. Organizations become businesses. And that’s fine. Let’s support them so they can eat and feed their kids.
So it begs the question, if I feel that way about them is it fine to support non open source orgs and software? Of course it is.
So it basically comes down to the complaining that the software is not good enough.
Of course “good enough” isn’t binary, so if its on the threshold of usability I use it and if its severely lacking then I don’t. No big deal.
If its free, then there is no reason to complain regardless. If you’re paying for it, I think your opinion has a bit more weight. Of course there’s still a scale. If it’s so far removed from usability then I just don’t buy it. Windows is a good example of that. But if its close, voicing your opinion that you want certain features is more than fine. It doesn’t remove your support. Wanting Affinity on Linux is a fine desire. If they haven’t said they aren’t going to then asking isn’t a complaint. It’s a want.
I use Affinity because its the best solution I can find. I would love to have it on Linux. Maybe one day it will happen, but I’m not holding my breath. Supporting Affinity in hopes that they make it better for me (for my preferred platform) is OK, because I’m finding a way to use the product that suits me today. If that way becomes too much hassle tomorrow, I’ll move on. But if they make it easy for me to stay with them then I won’t. But either way, supporting Gimp won’t make it Affinity. It’ll just make Gimp a better Gimp.
I guess it boils down to, do you support something that isn’t what you want in hopes it becomes what you want it to be or do you support something that is exactly what you want, hoping it will go to where you want it?
Sorry I rambled on there (I’m tired). I do agree with you but there’s a counter point I also agree with. I don’t think they are exclusive.
Agreed. At the cost of Adobe software, it is amazing that we cannot get a Kickstarter to fund software that closes the gap.
$250 one time from 4000 people would be a million dollars. Isn’t it $300 a year for Photoshop?
I agree with you. My dream is that every public school should use and contribute to FOSS and FOSH, but I’m an utopiste. Honestly I wish Serif would at least free some of its codebase but that’s very unlikely. I would like to have these proprietary software as I still rely on them for my workflow on a GNU/Linux machine rather than macOS and that sounds more reasonnable for a private company building private code and selling licences. Today it’s some of the few software that I can’t run on GNU/Linux to ditch a proprietary OS for work.
I have finally ditched Windows years ago after living my whole childhood in that proprietary crappy spyware environment and did tried many FOSS tools for professionnal work and I do use some (PenPot, blender, OBS, Thunderbird, VSCodium (and Zed a bit), LibreOffice, Nextcloud, UltimakerCura and Signal to name a few).
Unfortunately I still do rely on proprietary software (and these rely on proprietary OS) and yeah there is a reason for that : I need to get the work done. They have the money proprietary licence advantage over FOSS tools of course but hey a small part of the money I make thanks to these proprietary tools are sent to foss projects I want to support. It’s not as big as I wish and I don’t have enough time nor skills to contribute as much as I want to the Free World in general but I do my part and it has grown over the years.
I would prefer relying on proprietary solution on a free OS than relying on proprietary software that rely on proprietary OS. That’s why I signed this (probably useless) petition.