Mastodawn

Affinity is free, I have thoughts! If you want to know what they are you can click this link: https://wilkinson.graphics/blog/2025-11-01-affinity-is-free/

If you don't want to know what they are, you can do other things! Ride a bike! Watch the sunset! The world is your oyster!

Affinity is Free! ...But at What Cost?

My thoughts on the state of graphics software in 2025

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Valery 🍁✨Nov 3

@hank Another consideration: Canva is not only big in marketing–it's huge in education. My partner is a teacher and the kids and teachers all use Canva in some form. If I were to guess it looks like they are going for a generational vendor lock where the next generation of creatives are more familiar with their suite than Adobe's for the sole reason that there's no cost and no friction to using it.

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Valery 🍁✨Nov 3

@hank Anyways great read! I share pretty much the same perspective as you here. I was halfway thru Cory Doctorow's Enshittification when this was announced so to say that I was skeptical is an understatement. 🙈

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Henry Wilkinson Nov 3

@valerymarier At this point I’m a little tired of “enshitification” alone as a critique, I think people get a bit lazy with their opinions when they rely solely on Doctorow’s points. Hoping I haven’t done that here heh.

…But also look! It’s the thing! This is always how it starts! I’m so tired of the cycle 🥲

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Valery 🍁✨

@hank Yeah I hear ya. Judging from what I've seen I'm hoping this ends up being more of a situation like Audacity post-Muse acquisition, where they use it as a funnel to their other products and continue to keep it free and make improvements. But it's hard to not recognize patterns.