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Time Till Open Source Alternative

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Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#301

Post by pessimizer »

KineticArms wrote: post #253
lrvick wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Photoshop for 8 years, including for web development, before switching to Gimp. Gimp is good enough for everything one needs in web dev, is free, and has a vital feature Photoshop lacks: the ability to run on a Linux workstation. When developing software intended for Linux servers the value of having a Linux workstation to easily do local development cannot be understated.

Photoshop runs fine on Linux. I pay for it and use it in Wine. Gimp is hot trash and to add insult to injury it's responsible for birthing Gtk; it's a fool me once fool me twice thing. What is this mutually shared meme-delusion that Gimp is anywhere close to an adequate facsimile of Photoshop?

Photoshop is garbage with a randomized interface that is also trying to sell you things. People think it's intuitive because it's the industry standard and stockholm syndrome. GIMP is bad (but improving) on print color, and on non-destructive filters and layers.

The hyperbolic invective hurled at GIMP by Photoshop users is astounding. I often spend all day in Photoshop and Illustrator doing preprint and it makes me want to burn Adobe to the ground every day. I would gladly never look at PS again if GIMP got color right.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#302

Post by supportlocal4h »

johnfn wrote: post #65
cowtools wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah, shucks. Let's not argue. You're both right. Can we embrace great points on both sides without strong diageement?

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#303

Post by pessimizer »

troad wrote: post #246
lrvick wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Photoshop for 8 years, including for web development, before switching to Gimp. Gimp is good enough for everything one needs in web dev, is free, and has a vital feature Photoshop lacks: the ability to run on a Linux workstation. When developing software intended for Linux servers the value of having a Linux workstation to easily do local development cannot be understated.

> I used Photoshop for 8 years, including for web development, before switching to Gimp. > Gimp is good enough for everything one needs in web dev, is free, and has a vital feature Photoshop lacks: the ability to run on a Linux workstation. When developing software intended for Linux servers the value of having a Linux workstation to easily do local development cannot be understated. Precisely. You're a dev for whom…

> Meanwhile, artists and designers who work in Photoshop day in and day out - the people comprising the bulk of Photoshop's actual market - overwhelmingly reject GIMP, and they don't generally have the capability to make a new tool, so they stick with Adobe.

That's because Photoshop was early and is an industry standard, so you're going to have to learn it anyway. There's no incentive to learn GIMP because it's not going to cut you out of a job, and there's no incentive to move your shop to GIMP because all it's going to do is eliminate the massive bulk of the labor pool that is unfamiliar with it.

Also, if you do print, the color situation in GIMP is not good.

But the self-congratulation here is silly. The market chose Photoshop because it was the only choice. The market didn't place it in its position, it largely began the market. The reason people choose to use it is because they are choosing to eat, not because they think it's better.

People who think it's intuitive or straightforward are very different to me. The GIMPs feature organization is far superior to PS imo, it's just lacking a couple of very large features that require being woven throughout the implementations of everything in the data model, like proper color management and live filtering. That's to be expected from the nature of the project, because stuff like that would normally be focused on by a team that would consult with every other team to keep systems like that consistent and debugged. Free software has to rely on individual developers to get inspired to create a system themselves, completely married to the current design, that bolts what they're doing to every component. It's hard.

But when we get it, no one can take it away from us. They could start charging by the minute to use Photoshop tomorrow.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#304

Post by pessimizer »

School-Cotton wrote: post #281
dotancohen wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a win for open source because reducing payments is not a goal of open source. Assured continuation of availability and ownership of user's data is the explicit goal of the FOSS movement as stated by RMS. That means that it will continue to run on your hardware, and won't lock your data, and you can fix the bugs and suit it to your purpose. Money was never the issue.

Richard Stallman’s personal philosophy does not define the goals of open source. There are many different people contributing to it for many different reasons, and yes, having free (as in non-paid) alternatives to proprietary software is one of the most prominent ones.

> Richard Stallman’s personal philosophy does not define the goals of open source.

Richard Stallman has nothing do do with open source, and Free software was defined as Richard Stallman's personal philosophy, take it or leave it. He hasn't changed it.

I'm a complete free software advocate, but definitely only for Stallman's reasons. I have no urge to give free things to computer programmers. If I'm going to give away free stuff, I'll give to the poor. I don't have any special sympathy towards the needy computer programmer just because they share my hobby/vocation.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#305

Post by pessimizer »

latexr wrote: post #255
ngrilly wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re cherry-picking examples. Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps and Chrome are extraordinarily successful products.

Depending on one’s point, it can be argued that listing Google’s successful products is the cherry-picking: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Why would you argue? Selecting only the successes is the literal definition of cherry-picking. I'd say that every one of those cherries is very arguable, though, especially if one's definition of successful has any relation to being profitable.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#306

Post by latchkey »

seanhunter wrote: post #182
latchkey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? This comment seems absurd, at best. I am no 'google engineer' (is that supposed to be a bad thing?) and I've been using and loving GCP for well over a decade. Built several extremely successful businesses on it.

This "well over a decade" claim needs some qualification. GCP only became gevnerally available in Nov 2011. Before that, there was App Engine and Cloud Storage, but not GCP.

I jumped onto AppEngine as soon as I saw it announced (probably here on HN). Probably sometime around late 2009.

Quickly convinced my friend Jeff to get onto it... we saw a need for a datastore wrapper and he (and I a tiny bit) wrote Objectify, which is one of the most widely used tools for AppEngine out there.

Look at the license.txt... Feb 6, 2010, 13 years old...

https://github.com/objectify/objectify

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#307

Post by latchkey »

jedberg wrote: post #161
latchkey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? This comment seems absurd, at best. I am no 'google engineer' (is that supposed to be a bad thing?) and I've been using and loving GCP for well over a decade. Built several extremely successful businesses on it.

What they're saying is that Google is opinionated. They determine that their way is the right way and you will do it their way. As opposed to Microsoft and Amazon, who both ask their customers, "how do you want to solve this problem?" and then build what the customers want. If the way Google has decided you should build something happens to work for you, great, but for most people, they want a product built around ho…

I think that early days they were more opinionated. The design of the datastore is extremely google centric scale. Exposing it to end users was a matter of just "learn to use it, or not".

AppEngine had a lot of limitations, like the version of Java you could use, because they had to basically hack at the JVM to get it secure enough.

These days though, things like Cloud Functions, are effectively just simple containers and http endpoints. I could move them off to another provider with a days work.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#308

Post by surajrmal »

yobbo wrote: post #210
DannyBee wrote: post #40

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…

> open source as a whole sucks at building products, but is great at building infrastructure. Yes, but Android? When companies promote OSS products, they become successful. > totally orthogonal to building "a good product that people want to use" An OSS product will not end up on shelves with glitzy packaging for people to buy unless some company burns money to do that. It's not a fundamental law and OSS isn't orthog…

AOSP is not a product and is not really usable by itself. It needs to be combined with Gapps and Google play services to really be considered a product. And I would argue that combination isn't a consumer facing product either. It's a product aimed at OEMs who combine it with their hardware and a few layers of additional hardware integration in order to create a consumer facing product. I know there are open source alternatives that replace many of these proprietary layers but they aren't very popular with the market.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#309

Post by dotancohen »

ectopod wrote: post #298
dotancohen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely they see it. Do you use the Report Spam button? Because that is how they see it.

I use Thunderbird. Does gmail take notice of me moving messages to the spam folder? (Question not directed at you specifically.)

As a Thunderbird user too,I would love to know the answer as well.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#310

Post by ryukafalz »

tomrod wrote: post #285
ryukafalz wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this mutually shared meme-delusion that Gimp is anywhere close to an adequate facsimile of Photoshop? It’s not a facsimile of Photoshop but it serves the same purpose. In my experience the people who come to GIMP expecting it to work exactly like Photoshop are the ones who are disappointed, because it’s not Photoshop. But if you use it and don’t expect to already know how to use it because you know Photosho…

Precisely. "It's fine" is the problem. It doesn't need to be fine, it needs to compete with Photoshop to be a serious tool in the space it serves. And what the vast, vast majority of artists have said is that it is insufficient for that. Can you crop a photo in it? Sure, once you figure out the placement of things. Can you perform serious photo manipulation? Somewhat, although Photoshop takes way less cognitive cost…

> Somewhat, although Photoshop takes way less cognitive cost

Does it take less cognitive cost because it’s actually easier, or because you’re used to it and you’re not used to GIMP?

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