ThibJun 14, 2024

I'm really not impressed to see some accounts with a large follower count rant against open source projects largely built by volunteers.

Dragging volunteers in the mud and making false assumptions about projects and their dynamics is immature and harmful.

Let's all remember that most open source projects suffer from chronic underfunding and understaffing.

Normalise kindness and encouragement. We're all small, trying to build a bigger something.

Show threadGrunge Fox 
@thibaultamartin What's even more saddening to me is that most people that complain about open-source software often compare it to the proprietary alternatives, quite often paid ones, expecting the same level of polish and amount of features

Probably the most common one is comparing Photoshop to GIMP, or Affinity Designer to Inkscape, but the problem is that both of them are paid. If people donated the same amount of money to GIMP or Inkscape devs as they do to Adobe and Serif/Canva, I'm pretty sure these programs would gain a lot more features and polish much quicker, and maybe even eventually become better than the proprietary alternatives

The best example of a successful open-source piece of software would be Blender, and one of the reasons it's the best tool for 3D graphics is because big animation studios fund it, and even contribute to it, including Disney/Pixar. And everyone can still use it, completely for free, and in my opinion, we wouldn't have as many creators in the industry if not for this reason
Jun 14, 2024 at 3:53pmWeb
Show threadMartin Owens Jun 15, 2024

@grunge_fox @thibaultamartin

If anyone wants more Inkscape. Please join my patreon.

Otherwise, I have to get other work and certainly couldn't hire anyone else.

Show thread👽🐦🦇🐉💻Jun 15, 2024

@grunge_fox @thibaultamartin considering gimp's price tag of free, i'd say it's doing pretty damn good.

i've briefly touch the fancier paid for proprietary software in high school (albeit in a pirated version of it but still... XD)
and i just don't get it.

but maybe it takes someone with a more artistically inclined brain 🤷‍♂️

Show threadGrunge Fox Jun 15, 2024
@loganer @thibaultamartin Well, as someone who started with GIMP, and only then tried using Photoshop (also didn't pay for it ​​ ), I'd say GIMP does about 80% of what Photoshop does, it just isn't as straightforward, so you might use a couple of different features, to get the same result, as with a single feature in Photoshop

The only thing I'd say GIMP really lacks is a better healing tool (which is the main selling point of Photoshop), and a better shapes tool, as well as being able to transform fonts more easily and less destructively, but I guess the first one you can fix by simply installing a plugin (tho, I never had luck with using it on the Flathub version of GIMP, so...), and the rest are much easier and more powerful in Inkscape anyway

Although, GIMP is a lot more lightweight, with Photoshop often randomly eating gigabytes of RAM on idle. And GIMP also has the GEGL library, which I always found a lot better than most effects in Photoshop, or even Inkscape (because yes, you can also use it for rester graphics editing if you're as crazy enough)

I know that some long-time Photoshop users often complain about GIMP's UI/UX, but I'm not sure about that one, because as a long-time GIMP user I'd actually say the same about Photoshop, but it's probably the same issue as the whole "Windows users trying Linux for the first time", it just gets getting used to it. Tho, I'd say it did improve slightly with GIMP 2.99
Show thread👽🐦🦇🐉💻Jun 15, 2024

@grunge_fox @thibaultamartin i wont name names but get this...

it was the teacher doing the pirating 😂 .

probably best freaking teacher i've ever had, i hope he's doing good for himself.