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nikscha ,

That’s why open source rules

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

I love FOSS but GIMP and Inkscape aren’t nearly as usable or feature rich as the Affinity suite, let alone the Adobe suite.

aldalire ,

Man i just hate these comments. Imagine you’re gimp / foss developer and you see an uncritical, unactionable, and dumbass comment about how a multimillion dollar company beats your software. Like of course mate Affinity & Adobe developers get money thrown at them, while gimp developers have to stand your ungrateful ass.

MalachaiConstant ,

I just installed gimpshop the other day on a whim and immediately I could work at 90% capacity just based 20+ years of Photoshop muscle memory. Gimp never lasted more than a day with me the dozen or so times I’ve tried it before.

There are ways to make it work, and the tooling out there is getting better every day.

Ajen ,

Looks like it’s last official version was released in 2007. Are you using a version from gimpshop.com with added adware/spyware? The wiki for gimpshop is pretty eye-opening…

I originally created Gimpshop, but I’m not the jerk who owns that domain and added adware & spyware to the source. Sorry about that. I hate that this guy is out there making my fun little project into an abomination.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop

MalachaiConstant ,

I had no clue about this. Thanks for the heads up. Not sure which one I installed but it’s on my test machine and I can check tomorrow

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

‘It doesn’t meet my needs’ seems like light criticism but I understand your point. I’m eternally thankful to devs but at a certain point it either does what you need or it doesn’t.

ylai ,

GIMP is a special case. GIMP is being getting outdeveloped by Krita these days. E.g.:

gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/9284

Or compare with:

www.phoronix.com/news/Krita-2024-GPUs-AI

GIMP had its share of self inflicted wounds starting with a toxic mailing list that drove away people from professional VFX and surrounding FilmGimp/CinePaint. When the GIMP people subsequently took over the GEGL development from Rhythm & Hues, it took literally 15 years until it barely worked.

Now we are past the era of simple GPU processing into diffusion models/“generative AI” and GIMP is barely keeping up with simple GPU processing (like resizing, see above).

yistdaj , (edited )

From what I understand, GIMP fell behind because it refused corporate donations while Krita accepted them. This lead to GIMP reducing in scope as the 1-3 part-time* developers (at least when I last really looked into it) realised they’d never catch up, leading to people donating less as they weren’t satisfied with GIMP’s simultaneous underpromising and underdelivering. Meanwhile Krita managed to receive enough money to hire a team of full time developers for several years, leading to better software, to more donations. It’s like the poverty trap, but with software.

  • Edit: part-time isn’t the right word, more like casual
whereisk ,

From someone with a passing interest, Krita seems on a similar trajectory to Blender - gathering momentum and going from strength to strength, whereas Gimp seems rather stuck.

Trollception ,

Y’all gimp developers need to grow a pair

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

I use a lot of open source apps which aren’t as polished, the UIs need work, they’re clunky, and they won’t enshittify.

nikscha ,

Yeah and there’s just as many paid for programs with the same issues… What’s your point? Want me to show you some open source programs that are polished? Heard of blender before? That’s not the point I was making anyway… The issue with non foss software is that you have ZERO control over it. Big corporations can decide to drop support at any moment or make a free tier paid.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Allow me to reiterate:

I use a lot of open source apps…and they won’t enshittify.

merthyr1831 ,

even if they keep lifetime licenses for now, it’s blatantly obvious how Canva plans to use Embrace, Extend, Extinguish to move people to a subscription service for newer releases.

If adobe can do it with Photoshop et al. without losing its brand reputation, then Affinity will follow suit in due course.

Ajen ,

Yep, they’ll probably stop updating the Affinity product and launch a new product line with annual subscriptions. Probably cloud-based.

merthyr1831 ,

I was more expecting Affinity to integrate and replace features with Canva until a subscription is all but required for basic functionality.

Nindelofocho ,

Man I JUST got affinity photo for RAW work cause its a good workflow and way better than lightroom and now I find out about this? Ffs cant have shit on earth

lud ,

Well on the upside you will keep your access forever and get updates for free for some time still (until v3 comes out).

If you think the workflow is good now, then it shouldn’t matter much because you will keep that workflow.

boredtortoise ,

Try darktable

omxxi ,

I’ve bought VPN lifetime several times, 2 of them have disappeared, 2 are still running. On the other hand, just think about it from the company point of view, lifetime support is not a sustainable business model, so it necessarily must be a scam.

Trae ,

If my Windscribe Lifetime VPN eventually disappears, I’ll of course be pretty upset. However, for the 35 bucks I paid for it in 2016 I feel like I’ve received an amazing value.

0ops ,

I bought one on sale for 20 bucks like 9 years ago. It’s still running, though it’s not a particularly great VPN. Performance is meh, the clients are really basic. I still use it because after this long it’s basically free

lud ,

Nah not necessarily. It can be a great way to get money early on without venture capital.

Yeah, you will have to provide the service to them forever but they are usually a small bunch so they aren’t a big deal if you manage to get big later on.

I suspect most companies that offer lifetime even when they are big have statistics showing that they lose little money or none because the high price means that the average consumer won’t use the service for the required amount of years to break even.

Ajen ,

Yeah, it’s kind of like crowd-funding. The early customers get a great deal, but also have the risk of the company going out of business.

shield_gengar ,
@shield_gengar@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fuck

grimacefry ,
@grimacefry@aussie.zone avatar

The only two that have been good to me and still going strong is Plex and PocketCasts with their lifetime memberships. That was a good deal. But too many to name that turned out to absolutely not lifetime. GPS systems definitely the worst culprits.

aulin ,

I was so close to buying PocketCasts’ lifetime license, and then they switched to subscription-only. Still salty about it, because it’s the best podcatcher by far!

DLSantini ,

Wait, do we actually get something for our old lifetime Pocketcasts licenses? Because I remember when they switched the app to being free, with any extra features being locked behind a subscription, existing licenses holders got… not anything, as far as I remember. I’ve been using the app daily for years now, and have no reason to give it up, but I don’t feel like having bought the license back in the day is getting me anything extra over what a new free-tier user is getting now. Am I missing something?

lud ,

…pocketcasts.com/…/lifetime-access-to-pocket-cast…

Apparently lifetime only applies to the web app or something.

I have never heard of that app so I don’t know much.

andrew ,
@andrew@radiation.party avatar

Plex has been good to me but I grow ever more concerned that they will drop lifetime Plex pass features as they become more focused on being a provider of media and not just a streaming middleman.

psud ,

Huh. Years ago I tried pocket casts, podcast addict, and podcast republic. I chose republic since it fitted my usage better. They have not gone subscription. I bought the app once years ago and that’s been it. I’m not sure if the free version is ad supported.

I would have been very disappointed had I bought pocket casts and then found I was locked out of some features later. I have dropped other apps that did that, after leaving them bad reviews

RickRussell_CA ,

What amazes me are the number of companies selling “lifetime” VPN service or “lifetime” cloud storage service with a straight face.

Like… that is TRANSPARENTLY a scam. You’re literally gonna sell lifetime licenses to people with more money than common sense, until the entire system is overloaded, then just go out of business.

derpgon ,

I mean, you ARE getti ]ng what you pay for, just not until the end of YOUR lifetime,

merthyr1831 ,

at least with standalone software it’s going to work forever as long as the OS supports it. cant say the same for live service software that you can’t run at home

Ajen ,

How much software is standalone these days, though? It seems like most companies are shifting to SaaS.

merthyr1831 ,

Beyond FOSS there’s not many, though Steam actually has a big catalogue of non-game software that’s standalone

merthyr1831 ,

as long as you can host the “SaaS” elements yourself (nextcloud, for example) there’s a lot more software than you’d initially think. There will always be a market for self-hosted options for cloud software imo: loads of businesses are reluctant to move their internal infrastructure to the cloud

Ajen ,

Nextcloud isn’t SaaS, unless you’re paying someone else to manage your server. Self-hosting is never SaaS.

psud , (edited )

I just bought a lifetime subscription to Nebula (a YouTube-like service akin to a co-op for content creators) and my rationale was

  • Lifetime costs the same as ten years of annual priced subscriptions
  • It will be cheaper than that due to inflation
  • The service has been operating for 5 years, so it’s likely to last at least 10 more
  • The service is philosophically opposed to the sort of place that may try to acquire it

Other stuff, no thanks. Too many practical products (as opposed to entertainment ones) have a great supply of methods to screw you and a great desire to screw you.

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

Not only software license, I believe any products “lifetime” comes with a lot of caveates.

Case in point, I purchased a fountain pen a decade ago, and started to leak (a crack around the threads) a few year back. The company is known for its lifetime warranty and good customer service, as per the warranty, it said if the product is defective (which I believe leaking pen body is), I am entilted for a replacement part or a new model of the same price if the pen is no longer in production. I reached out to customer service and was told, they can’t supply a replacement part because the pen is no longer in production and I’m not entitled to a new model because they doesn’t deem a leaking body a defect.

Hylactor ,

Why would you not name the company? If they won’t protect you, you are not obligated to protect them.

ToyDork ,

Maybe he is an employee who bought the pen with employee discount? Just saying that’s possible, even though it’s a complete guess.

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

Ah, nope. Average consumer

ToyDork ,

Fair enough.

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

You are absolutely right.

The company is “Franklin-Christoph”

BreakDecks ,

It looks like you can just ship the pen to them and request a repair or replacement. Maybe just ignore whatever the customer support rep said and follow this instead: www.franklin-christoph.com/pages/warranty

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

It never dawned on me that I can just ship it. I always tend to contact customer service before doing anything.

Anyways I have moved to a new country, it is kind of costly to ship a pen internationally (I am also afraid it’ll get lost somewhere since it’s such small package), added the uncertainty of they (Franklin-Christoph) would honor it, I am quite hesitant to do it.

theOneTrueSpoon ,

they doesn’t deem a leaking body a defect

Does that mean they purposely design their pens to leak? If it’s not a defect, it must be by design, right? Unless the user did something to break it, accidentally or otherwise

TwinTusks , (edited )
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

I believe they just chalked it up as normal wear and tear.

Update: The leak is from the threads where the pen cap screws on the pen, there is a argument here as to I twist it too tight, and over the years there developed a crack. You can barely see the crack, but its enough for the ink to leak bleed through.

psud , (edited )

Twsbi - a Korean pen manufacturer - had some bad plastic in one of their production runs, the body of the pen would crack in its threads at the tail of the pen

They handled it properly, I sent them an email with a photo of the damage, they asked for my postal address and sent me a replacement body. The reassembled pen has been working happily now several years later

I now have five twsbi pens (four piston fillers, one vacuum filler - the vac mini doesn’t leak on planes)

I have never tested the warranties on Zippo lighters or Maglite lights

*Edited spelling of twsbi

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

You meant Twsbi, its a Taiwanese manufacturer. Yes, their customer service is top notch! I also have a cracked cap from my Twsbi mini, and they sent me a replacement even without a picture (infact they sent it twice, because I didnt specified my pen color, so they sent it again).

psud ,

That’s the one :)

MonkeMischief ,

I’m still crazy salty about when I invested ~$250 to get the Substance Painter + Designer suite, and got the “We’Re JoInInG tHe AdObE fAMiLy wooo!” Email…

Followed by the “Don’t worry we’ll still let you get indie licenses” email…

Followed by the “It’s gonna be subscription only but you can still keep the never-will-be-upgraded indie version we’re discontinuing.”

How can the likes of Adobe and Autodesk be so garbage and yet everything they taint with their miasmal existence is or becomes “InDuStRy StAnDaRd”? At this point I refuse to touch Adobe stuff partly because their membership is harder to quit than a gym, and the rest is just out of sheer spite.

I just refuse to use commercial creative software at this point. The blatant rug pulling is just expected now.

telllos ,

They are really good to push product with very cheap licences to students. Then it’s not easy to learn a new tool.

lud ,

I wouldn’t call their licences very cheap for students.

You can apparently only get discounts on their bundle which includes all their programs and the discount gets worse after year one.

It’s a decent discount but it’s still expensive.

psud ,

The alternative tools are disabled by the patents Adobe holds. They have to find other ways of implementing many techniques

cmrn ,

I am so sick of the new age of zero ownership or protections. Instead of greedy companies losing customers, other companies just see it like “oh shit we can do that too?” and consumers are the only ones losing.

lud ,

For Context here is one Email I got from Affinity yesterday:

To our amazing Affinity community,

Today marks a momentous new chapter in our journey together.

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.

This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far.

We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We’ve worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable.

None of that changes today.

In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities that would never previously have been achievable.

Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all.

To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable, we hope this this FAQ will answer many of your questions.

You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together.

You helped us start a movement.

Today, that movement becomes a revolution.

With heartfelt thanks, Ash Hewson - Affinity CEO

Ashley Hewson

CEO

Another Email I got today:

The Affinity and Canva Pledge

By the Affinity and Canva Teams

As we step into our shared future, we are committing to four pledges that we’re excited to share with the current and future Affinity community. https://email.affinity.serif.com/Images/2024/March/Pledge/pledges-email-image6.png

Earlier this week we shared the news that Affinity had been acquired by Canva. As the dust settles on the announcement, we wanted to say more about our future and our commitment to the Affinity community.

Since our inception, both of our companies have shared the same mission and vision. We were both founded with the belief that design shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford complex software. Our goal has been to make the highest quality design tools available to the largest number of people with fair, transparent and affordable pricing at our core. By joining forces, we’re looking forward to accelerating this shared vision.

Above all, together, we’re committed to continuing and amplifying Affinity’s position as the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market, while continuing to empower millions of designers to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals.

1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.

If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to.

2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite.

We believe Affinity is the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market. It’s non-destructive, super fast, and easy to use. As such, we want to reassure you that it isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, we’re committed to using our shared resources to continue expanding Affinity’s products through further investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more.

These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2.

3. We will provide Affinity free for schools & NFPs.

Canva, which has pledged 30% of its value as a company towards doing good in the world through its two-step plan, offers premium plans at no cost to schools and NFPs all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers, plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits, benefit from this each month.

We’re excited to extend this programme to include free access for schools and nonprofits to Designer, Photo and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value to this free offering, helping millions of students to master the craft of design, and empowering mission driven organisations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact.

We’ll share more details on this in the coming months, including what it means for our education and NFP customers that already use Affinity.

4. We are committed to listening and being led by the design community at every step in this journey.

Affinity and Canva were both founded on the basis that their respective communities – of expert and non-expert designers – deserved better. The tools available were overly complex, overly priced, or both. We know designers deserve better. They deserve the highest quality tools to serve their needs and they deserve to be treated fairly.

We also believe the design community also knows best what it needs. As such, we are committed to shaping our products based on your ideas, your feedback and your needs. To kick things off, we’d love to learn more about what you’d like to see as we embark on this next chapter of our journey. What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you here.

Thank you to everyone who has been an integral part of the journey so far. We’re excited for the future and can’t wait to see what we can build together.

With gratitude and excitement, The Affinity and Canva Teams

All links and images are from the email and not mine. I also replicated their email formatting in Markdown to make it easier to read on Lemmy.

psud ,

None of that changes today

(It’ll take weeks, at least before we start screwing you)

LiveLM ,

Ah so this is how I find out. Sweet.

FUCK

Roldyclark ,

Ah damnit I love affinity. Can Someone fix Gimp already??

tsugu OP ,
@tsugu@slrpnk.net avatar

It’s worth mentioning that GIMP is mainly developed by two developers. If you wish for the development to be faster, you should consider donating.

Roldyclark ,

Tbh I don’t think it’s fixable. Need to make a fresh start.

Hadriscus ,

What are you talking about ?

tsugu OP ,
@tsugu@slrpnk.net avatar

Literally every meme I’ve ever made was done in GIMP. I can say that the software needs non-destructive editing that applies to transforming layers. So far there’s only non-destructive effects on the layers, but discarding 20 years of work because the software is not a 1:1 copy of Photoshop seems silly.

ProdigalFrog ,

GIMP is an odd project, one that I’m not sure is actually being held back by money, considering they’ve been sitting on a donation of bitcoin since 2014 that now amounts to 1.3 million, and just… haven’t used it, at all?

Krita seems like a more promising project, IMHO.

yistdaj , (edited )

I think it should be clarified that GIMP’s structure isn’t able to make use of donations to GIMP as a single entity. Edit: or at least wasn’t, I hear they can now.

I agree that Krita is more promising though, I switched to Krita years ago and have never looked back.

ProdigalFrog ,

Ah, thank you for the info, I was not aware. I hope they’re able to put that money to good use now.

toastal ,

Adjustment layers are literally coming this year via GEGL.

Anticorp ,

License means you paid us for something we’ll let you use until we don’t feel like it anymore.

dutchkimble ,

Plex lifetime is the gift that keeps on giving. Same with some indexers like nzbgeek.

cooopsspace ,

Plex turned shit years ago.

Switched to Jellyfin and never looked back.

Even rubbed it in my just deleting my Plex accounts with the lifetime pass on it, means nothing to me now.

dutchkimble ,

I see the value of both, and like both. The future of plex with the social aspect is definitely concerning. The future of jellyfin looks great. But as of now I find myself using plex more.

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