An update from Affinity and Canva on the acquisition of Affinity/Serif by Canva. They have made 4 pledges, including to maintain perpetual licenses.
cough cough
Long story short:
- They pledge to keep the status quo. (IE perpetual licenses in new versions)
- Development is going to speed up.
- Subscriptions are 99% coming. (Albeit optional at least at the start)
- Free in schools. (IE training new artists in the Canva ecosystem. So they can be milked later. Here’s a personal anecdote: Maya, the paid 3D alternative to Blender is free in schools. Come out of school and it’s 235$ a month)
&
- Now throw all those pledges out because words mean nothing. This is not a partnership, this is an acquisition, and unless the contract is provided for us, in writing of the agreed upon terms. Nothing else matters but the actions that we’ll see in the near future.
This all feels a lot like any low- or mid-range CAD suite that gets acquired by Autodesk, Siemens, or PTC. Promise enough to avoid a revolt, but start eroding with the next release.
The educational licensing for lock-in is also par for the course. It can be done well (Rhino 3D is legendary for letting small-shop designers use their cheap edu license forever, even commercially), but generally it’s just there to maintain the supply of baby drafters and get subscriptions from employers.
Because Maya is the industry standard and while Blender and Maya are very similar, they aren’t identical.
I thought Blender was the standard. I always thought of it as the only instance when the FOSS tool was the standard.
Blender is not a CAD program. Basically, this means 3D models are more freeform. In CAD, everything is done with measurements.
Blender is used for 3D artists all around schools. CAD software is used for engineers and such.
Edit: and Affinity is not used for 3D modelling at all. It’s for images.
The industry has shown us how they absolutely cannot be trusted, while FOSS applications have shown us they are sustainable and will always put the user’s interests at heart, with Blender being a prime example.
We have to stop funding closed source software, enshittification is inevitable.
If we all donated the price of Affinity’s perpetual licence to Krita, Kdenlive, and Inkscape, we’d have a suite of tools that could outcompete them all, and never have to worry about another acquisition.
Totally agree, but the thing that makes me angry is that many, many open source projects miss this opportunity because of absolutely garbage UI/UX.
Look at LibreOffice, for example. Lots of features that do more than what people need from MS Office most of the time, but even I cannot bring myself to use it long term because it’s UI/UX is trash.
The open source industry has the problem that its devs think functionality is 99% of what matters, and most users disagree.
We need to have some project that is crowd funded to hire some awesome designers and UX people and have them constantly working on important open source projects. I’d sponsor that in a heartbeat.
This is why I love the Gnome desktop, while some decision are definitely controversial, they really put the user experience first. All libadwaita apps have the same basic styling and layout, so it’s always clear what you can and can not do. Libadwaita apps are just a joy to use, although some are a bit too basic for my liking
I’ve actually been pretty impressed with LibreOffice as of late. It’s fairly easy to adjust the theme (they have proper dark theme support now!) and layout to something pretty darn cozy feeling. Maybe for a power-user it’s not enough, but for my simple needs, like fiction writing and simple documents, I honestly can’t complain, they’ve done a solid job. Could it be better? Sure. But it’s in a good place, IMO.
I think GIMP is a better example of a really user-hostile UX. That, almost more than any other open-source app, needs a UI overhaul.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is like when bluebeam was bought. Bring on the enshitification and monthly subs then phase out support for perpetual license versions until the product isn’t worth using anymore.
I mean it’s reassuring, but I’m still cautious.
At this point, I may as well enjoy it for as long as it that’s. I already bought V2 when it came out, so at least I’m set for a while.
At least that’s one plus with actually buying software vs renting it like Adobe. If they close down/go belly up, I still have what I paid for.
True, but people who purchased Photoshop outright also still own it. It’s just super old and lacking most of today’s features.
