This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/Qwert-4 on 2024-07-08 03:00:27+00:00.

A few days ago, I watched a video on LTT about an experiment in which the team attempted to produce a video without using any Adobe products (limiting themselves to FOSS and pay-once-use-forever software). It did not go well. The video is titled “WHY do I pay Adobe $10K a YEAR?!”. I outlined the main 3 reasons:

  1. Adobe ecosystem. They have 20+ apps for every creative need and companies (like LTT) prefer their seamless interconnection.
  2. Lack of features. 95% of Adobe software features are covered in FOSS apps like Krita, Blender or GIMP, but it’s the 5% that matter from time to time.
  3. Everyone uses Adobe. You don’t want to be “that weird guy” who sends their colleague a weird file format they don’t know how to open.

We all here dislike Adobe and want their suites to be displaced with FOSS software in all spheres of creative life. But for the reasons I pointed out scattered underfunded alternatives like GIMP are unlikely to ever reach that goal.

I see the solution in the following:

We should establish a well-funded foundation with a full-time team that would coordinate the creation of a complete compatible creative software suite, improving compatibility of existing alternatives and developing missing features. I will refer to it as “FAF”—Free Art Foundation or however you want to expand it.

Once the suite reaches considerable level of completeness, FAF should start asking audience every week what features they want to see implemented. Then a dedicated team works on ten most voted for features for this week. If this foundation will be well-funded and will deliver 10 requested features every week (or 40 a month if a week is too little time for development) their suite will soon reach Adobe Creative Cloud level rendering it obsolete.

Someone once said “Remember, it’s always ethical to pirate Adobe software” and it spread like a meme. I always see it appearing under every video criticizing Adobe. No, it’s not. You are helping them to remain the industry standard. They will continue to make money from commercial clients who can’t consequence-safe pirate with their predatory subscription models. Just download Krita and, if you can afford it donate half the money you would spend on Photoshop to their team. They would greatly appreciate it.