Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

tedium.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 78 posts

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#11

Post by tene80i »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #6
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Atleast for the photo/image editing part, GIMP is FOSS and, while it definitely has a learning curve compared to some other software, does a pretty reasonable job

GIMP is a perfect example of how the plot has been lost.

Go to the download page: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - A mac user has FOUR equal priority download buttons to decide between, depending on chips and whether you want direct or torrent downloads. That is an absurd decision to put in front of 99% of computer users.

For power users, no problem. But if the objective was ever to be mainstream, this is among the reasons why it isn't. There is just not enough focus on making it easy.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#12

Post by gjsman-1000 »

zerkten wrote: post #9
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I'm not a FOSS advocate, but I think that's a bit strong. I think it's more a case that they recognized the need for a good user experience, but that never hit a threshold which would move the needle for change to happen with the most popular FOSS. Darktable is probably one of the exceptions here.

Darktable, to me, and multiple YouTubers who have looked at it...

... falls flat on it's face in the first impression by looking like an unresponsive window, due to the disorientingly light gray color design choices. I also just tried it and of course it's not notarized, meaning that it's almost impossible for anyone to install on macOS, unless they know of the secret button in System Settings. Nope, they aren't there yet.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#13

Post by dangus »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #7
b345 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DaVinci Resolve is on Linux and so are a lot of good free software like Krita, Blender etc.

Jumped the plot on that - you're right. On the other hand, Blender hardly operates like the average FOSS community in any way, shape, or form. Calling it a victory for FOSS methods when it's mostly SV-funded and has a heavily dictated direction is like calling Android a Linux victory.

If you’re going to start throwing qualifiers out there it dilutes your point.

FOSS advocate organizations like GNU specifically claim that open source and commercial sales are compatible. The important part is software freedom, where you can access source and modify it to your own needs and redistribute with a permissive license.

It doesn’t really matter that Blender has an opinionated roadmap or that it’s funded in a certain way. The bottom line is that you can obtain, modify, and redistribute the code in a free and open source way.

It doesn’t matter that Firefox has a bunch of branding to remove and pushes VPN subscriptions and such. The code is open source so you can fork it and redistribute so long as you remove branding.

Even if you have qualms with VSCode, it’s still FOSS. The only bit that’s limiting is the Microsoft extension ecosystem. But the underlying code is all free and available and is the basis for multiple popular forks. A large portion of it still represents a FOSS success.

If I buy an enterprise version of Grafana the fact that the community version is the basis of the application is a major benefit to me compared to buying a proprietary solution like Datadog. I can potentially contribute my own enhancements and fixes, I can inspect a large portion of the source code if I have a bug or question about how the application is intended to work, etc.

Long story short, FOSS has room for commercial interests, and is superior to the alternative of lack of source code.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#14

Post by sznio »

tene80i wrote: post #11
VoidWhisperer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast for the photo/image editing part, GIMP is FOSS and, while it definitely has a learning curve compared to some other software, does a pretty reasonable job

GIMP is a perfect example of how the plot has been lost. Go to the download page: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - A mac user has FOUR equal priority download buttons to decide between, depending on chips and whether you want direct or torrent downloads. That is an absurd decision to put in front of 99% of computer users. For power users, no problem. But if the objective was ever to be mainstream, this is among the…

i honestly don't care if someone gets scared away by too many buttons. might be better for them since GIMP contains a lot more confusing buttons.

photo-editing software will never be mainstream. I expect a person that works with media to be capable of picking the right download.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#16

Post by jordanb »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8
VoidWhisperer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast for the photo/image editing part, GIMP is FOSS and, while it definitely has a learning curve compared to some other software, does a pretty reasonable job

GIMP has been in development since 1996, and still can't handle basic features like CMYK; meaning any attempt to reproduce colors on a professional printer is doomed. We're not even talking Pantone yet.

People whined about CMYK until it became irrelevant (print died). I'd argue that GIMP was forward-looking by being digital-first.

The reality is all those GIMP haters can either get over it or enjoy paying increasingly high subscription fees for their increasingly enshittified creative suite subscription.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#17

Post by dist-epoch »

sznio wrote: post #14
tene80i wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIMP is a perfect example of how the plot has been lost. Go to the download page: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - A mac user has FOUR equal priority download buttons to decide between, depending on chips and whether you want direct or torrent downloads. That is an absurd decision to put in front of 99% of computer users. For power users, no problem. But if the objective was ever to be mainstream, this is among the…

i honestly don't care if someone gets scared away by too many buttons. might be better for them since GIMP contains a lot more confusing buttons. photo-editing software will never be mainstream. I expect a person that works with media to be capable of picking the right download.

Photo-editing software is mainstream, except it's done by non-professionsls on phones.

Re: Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users

#20

Post by [deleted] »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #12
zerkten wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a FOSS advocate, but I think that's a bit strong. I think it's more a case that they recognized the need for a good user experience, but that never hit a threshold which would move the needle for change to happen with the most popular FOSS. Darktable is probably one of the exceptions here.

Darktable, to me, and multiple YouTubers who have looked at it... ... falls flat on it's face in the first impression by looking like an unresponsive window, due to the disorientingly light gray color design choices. I also just tried it and of course it's not notarized, meaning that it's almost impossible for anyone to install on macOS, unless they know of the secret button in System Settings. Nope, they aren't ther…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN