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Time Till Open Source Alternative

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Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#61
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will use anything instead of gimp to be honest. Haven't tried it in a while but everytime I did in the past I can't help but question if it's developers actually use their own software.

Not me. Whenever I try alternatives, I can't help but question if people who use GIMP alternatives actually tried reading the GIMP manual.

If you need the manual it most probably means the UI needs improvement.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#62

The chart is interesting because it misses the important part - it covers time, but not adoption. For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market) IMHO, what the author gets wrong what so many people who claim this (they are not the first, or the last) get wrong - open source as a whole sucks at building products , but is great at building…

I have this hunch you could break into product management by product managing open source projects. You'd certainly learn some good skills if you could do it. It would be pure influence over authority.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#63
There could be an open source alternative to our software, yet it will be much harder to have an economically competitive open source alternative to systems or workflows. Amazon's Open Search Service, for instance, is just a control plane on top of Open Search (and Elasticsearch some time ago), yet so many companies flock to the service because they simply do not want to be bothered with manning a search service.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. Whenever I try alternatives, I can't help but question if people who use GIMP alternatives actually tried reading the GIMP manual.

If you need the manual it most probably means the UI needs improvement.

Only under the assumption they're designed for usage without the manual. I understand most things are but they definitely don't have to be. GIMP unfortunately may not be particularly explicit about this but having all users read the manual feels very much intended.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this were true! But keeping your software current in 2022 is an continuous project. UIs improve, platforms shift, features expand, vulns appear, needs change, server bills need to be paid.

I think this is a self-aggrandizing myth that is common in forums like HN with lots of programmers and designers: - UI's usually do not improve. They "improve" by making subjective changes for the benefit of the maker (often at the cost of the user). - Platforms are constantly shifting when they are owned by corporations. At first, businesses will penetrate the market by creating a competitive platform. Once their pl…

Man, I couldn't disagree more strongly! Programming is like building a house on shifting sand. How many projects that you haven't touched in the last 5 years still run? If you're anything like me, the percentage is vanishingly small - and my old projects aren't even that complicated. If you find that this is a belief "common in forums like HN with lots of programmers", I suspect that's because engineers are the most likely to have the hard-earned experience!

I mean, just look at HN for examples. Quite literally yesterday it happened again: Heroku decided to turn off all old free apps. That's a whole bunch of my old apps that are about to deprecate and break unless I do some work on them.

> Features sometimes expand, but most apps will reach a point where it no longer makes sense to add additional features.

I think this is overly idealistic, or perhaps limited to too small of a problem space. If your software stops adding features, it will quickly be out-competed by software which does have new features that improve productivity. I suppose you could argue that some apps are "finished", but I tend to see those as a rather small subset of all apps - things like single-use command-line utilities, say, like grep and awk. It's hard for me to fathom Photoshop ever being finished - until you're beaming ideas directly from brain to canvas, there's always the possibility that new features can save more time[1].

> Vulnerabilities don't just appear out of nowhere

But this is exactly what vulnerabilities do. One day, there isn't Heartbleed. The next day there is. One day, your Java dependencies are fine. The next day, log4j is broken for everyone on the internet. If you're not on call to solve problems like these, no one is going to use your app.

I don't really understand how you can say "[a program] doesn't just become more vulnerable over time just by merit of being old". This is exactly what happens to any program with dependencies.

> Server bills usually need to be paid because people have inserted themselves as middlemen

People have inserted themselves as middlemen because servers require upkeep, and upkeeping a server takes the time of an experienced professional. They need to be patched for vulns (again), maybe you need to swap out your SSD because it finally ran out of writes, or any in a litany of other problems.

[1]: Then again, with DALL-E, maybe this is happening sooner than we think - but that's beside the point.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#66
post #2

>All software will be open source, and no one will make money with software. I'm really not convinced. The chart shows Photoshop having an alternative in with GIMP in 1998. And 24 years later, people are still paying lots of money for Photoshop. Pretty much all of these examples are similar. Yes open source has replaced some categories of paid software like VCS, but in a way it just opened up more paid software in th…

The actual alternative to Photoshop for most people who just need to do simple edits ends up being photopea or another web app (there’s at least one other popular one I forget the name of). Most people don’t have the patience to install GIMP and figure out the interface.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#67

The chart is interesting because it misses the important part - it covers time, but not adoption. For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market) IMHO, what the author gets wrong what so many people who claim this (they are not the first, or the last) get wrong - open source as a whole sucks at building products , but is great at building…

> For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market)

This is an interesting question to me because Adobe only recently moved to cloud/subscription fairly recently. Before that, you could get a physical copy of Photoshop and keep it running forever.

As that pathway fades, it will be interesting to see if something will finally supplant Photoshop.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#69
post #66
post #2

>All software will be open source, and no one will make money with software. I'm really not convinced. The chart shows Photoshop having an alternative in with GIMP in 1998. And 24 years later, people are still paying lots of money for Photoshop. Pretty much all of these examples are similar. Yes open source has replaced some categories of paid software like VCS, but in a way it just opened up more paid software in th…

The actual alternative to Photoshop for most people who just need to do simple edits ends up being photopea or another web app (there’s at least one other popular one I forget the name of). Most people don’t have the patience to install GIMP and figure out the interface.

Yes, the photoshop web clone photopea is remarkably good for quick and dirty.

It has all the old hot keys and export (download in a format) is fast.

I would not consider gimp over that site at this point. But maybe if the site started restrictions or forcing payments I would.

More likely an os web app alternative would take the lead.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#70

The chart is interesting because it misses the important part - it covers time, but not adoption. For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market) IMHO, what the author gets wrong what so many people who claim this (they are not the first, or the last) get wrong - open source as a whole sucks at building products , but is great at building…

This is also why Google sucks at so many things, despite having the best offering on paper. GCP is honestly great, but a terrible product. Stadia? Zillion chat apps? Google Inbox by Gmail by Google? Google wallet pay Android pay wallet? They all work great and would be best in class if they were decent products and you could figure out how to get them to work at all.
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