Do you have numbers that show how popularity in free software translates
into more donation capital?

No, I just can't think of another way crowd funding would work if you have no crowd.

Maybe you have some other way, but I doubt you have figures to back it up either. ;)

As I mentioned earlier, blender and krita are tricky examples because
they don't run a traditional crowdfunding campaign.

Krita runs on kickstarter lately. Not sure what your definition of "traditional crowdfunding" is.

Blender has all kinds of crowd-funded donations, including donations from the Open Movie foundation, which collects funds for independent films made with open source software. It also has websites like Blender Cloud where you can subscribe to get access to content from Movie-makers on how to do all sort of stuff with Blender 3D + movie materials, and making of videos. It's still almost entirely funded by it's user base.

Blender started funding development with the pre-sales of open-movies.
Krita with Training DVDs.
They offered a product that was attractive to their users.

Yep. And they had to have enough users to make crowdfunding viable. Otherwise all the DVDs, etc. would not be sold, so the idea that we don't need a large user base for crowdfunding still doesn't make much sense.

There was a
physical product the paying contributors received for their money.

You will find that in most kinds of crowdfunding campaigns. They are called "perks", "rewards", "benefits", etc. depending on which crowdfunding websites you use.

Blender and Krita can afford creating a crowdfunding campaign on the
promise of delivering better software in the future because they already
have a captive audience.

Which... is not a large user-base in some way? Please explain. Your audience, no matter how niche or "captive" needs to be large enough to fund your project.

> A large userbase can only benefit the project if there's a way
> to
> convert that userbase in some sort of cash flow to support
> full-time
> paid development.
>
>
> Agreed. That's where kick-starter and other crowd funding campaigns
> have been a success. We need a crowd for those to work, and that crowd
> is going to be composed almost entirely of users. The reason crowd
> funding works so well is that a small donation from a lot of people is
> far easier to get than large donations from a small user-base.

I don't have numbers to back this claim, but it always seemed to me that
crowds donate really little money or no money at all, while specialized
users and people making money with the tool consider donating more
seriously, because they weigh the potential benefit that donating could
mean for their jobs.

You don't need numbers. Look at how many of the low-donation level perks are sold in a crowdfunding campaign, and see how much that total is compared to the highest-level multi-thousand-dollar sponsor perks. Crowdfunding works on the principle that a little money from a lot of people translates to a lot of money.

It's tempting to think that if you have 10 million users and ask them 10
cents you'll make a million dollars easily, as you are asking an amount
of money that anyone can pay. But that doesn't seem to be the case in
reality.

What makes you think that? If you have 10 million users, and they all know about your kickstarter development campaign you may not make 10 million dollars, but does it not make sense that the more users you have the more money you are likely to make more money? That seems to be the reality of the situation, and why crowdfunding works in the first place. I have a friend that makes $8000.00 a month payed through her Patreon campaign page, and it's entirely based on people who follow her on YouTube. That's 100% income from her followers (her "users").

There are extremely popular applications being used around the world by
lots of people that are unable to get just a couple thousand dollars
when they start a crowdfunding campaign.

Examples?

> We have to present something that works with existing industry
> machinery. Yes, Blender supports CUDA for rendering and CUDA is a
> proprietary technology owned by nVidia. Without paralel multi-threaded
> graphics hardware rendering our scenes, we would not have Big Buck
> Bunny, we would not have Sintel, we would not have Tears of Steal, and
> we would not have as many people interested in Blender as an
> industry-grade alternative for Autodesk Maya, or 3DS Max, or Cinema
> 4D, or Lightworks, etc. etc.

Check your facts. The only open movie that required CUDA was the only
made using cycles, Tears of Steel. :-p

I think you'll find they all do now. The point is, hardware acceleration is required for industry-grade 3D animation.

Cycles has replaced the (now deprecated) Blender internal renderer.

> If we want to expand a software project beyond the realm of the
> hobbyist, we must first provide competitive software. We presently
> can't do that without making some compromises. The industry is too
> advanced, and too integral to cinema, gaming, and commercial video to
> be ignored, or waved off as unimportant. Blender knows this, and
> supports Unity 3D, as well as file formats for CAD programs, and
> various proprietary closed source technology. This is why they are
> popular, and why they are getting ample funding and media attention
> (and throngs of extension developers) right now. They are a *perfect*
> example of successful open source software projects. They stay true to
> their own open-source roots by providing all their code, while not
> expecting the world to conform to their personal software creedo. That
> is the only thing that moves Open Source software forward, and the
> only companies that are making a success of it are the ones that
> understand that. We stick to our FOSS morals, and we invite people to
> join, we do not demand it.

See, that's exactly why free software and open source software mean
different things today.

I don't see how Blender 3D or Krita are not in-line with the spirit of FOSS.

Some people may see the fact that they support existing non-free software contrary to it, but you'll not find many professionals doing that. A professional knows their industry and works well within it.

Since the thread is "Educating users on Free Software" I think it's
relevant to define what kind of success do we want.
Are we pursuing relevance in the market or are we commited to create an
alternative that respects the users freedoms?

And my point again, is that short-term compromises are necessary to get to the long-term goals.

We can either have relevance in the professional market through integration and eventually domination, or we can sit on our FOSS ivory tower and scowl at everyone who doesn't conform entirely to our ideal world view. The latter isn't good for funding, and doesn't respect the user's freedom to choose for themselves either.

Adhering to Free Software ideals doesn't necessarily mean that we have
to sacrifice quality and power in our tools.
But maybe we do have to sacrifice a position in a market that requires
us to put compromises on our ideals.

It seems we are getting more and more nebulous with our debate here. Does supporting PSD import and export in Krita mean that they have compromised their ideals? Would supporting AI files in Inkscape do that? If so, why?

> Agreed, but their popularity and funding is a product of their
> willingness to compromise on what professionals need in terms of
> integration with existing systems, and new technology that is
> developed by companies whose bread and butter relies on keeping their
> drivers proprietary (for the time being). It is not reasonable to
> expect nVidia to open source their drivers just because we say all
> software should be open source. Not when we are a trivial minority. It
> is thus presently good-enough that nVidia is even willing to write
> drivers for Linux. When we buy nVidia, we are supporting Linux,
> because it is showing these large companies that Linux users mater as
> customers.

I strongly disagree.
Sorry to put it in these terms, but it is delusional to think that
you're doing any favour to a free operating system when you choose
buying from a company that has refused systematically to provide open
information about their products.

I find it equally delusional to think that you can get around the reality of the fact that Linux will not be a viable option for most professionals until it's available on equal footing with the industry ubiquitous alternatives. So fine, we don't support new hardware.

It's also delusional to think professionals will sacrifice a competitive edge that comes with new hardware just because it isn't in line with FOSS.

Also it's delusional to think that while "we are a trivial minority" we
have any impact on the decision of nVidia about making drivers for
linux. I'm pretty sure they have other reasons.

Not sure what you're trying to say here. We are a trivial minority compared to the whole of nVidia's customer base. This all-or-none attitude about FOSS is one of the reasons for it.

> I think that's a bit like saying: "We want to open a coffee shop, but
> our goal is not to have lots of customers, or make money."
> It sounds nice, but it's self-delusion at best. Of course we want lots
> of customers, and of course we want money. It does not have to be a
> stated goal, but it is a goal of any business, just as a large user
> base is a goal of any software project (especially those that want
> things like crowd-funding).

I think you're confusing needs and goals.
Making money it's not a goal. It's a need. And even though it's a need,
there are several free software developers who prefer to work for free
and avoid the obligations, deadlines and responsabilities that come when
money is involved.
Some people can afford working for free, as a hobbie, while other really
need the money.

Wait, so in your view money is a "need" and not a "goal".

So does the project need money? If the answer is "yes", I'm not sure what your point is here either.

Also I wouldn't say that getting a lot of people using inkscape is a
goal if that people will regard it as a "freeware" applications and
won't care about free software at all.

That's probably another area you and I differ on views. The software is free software whether or not the end user thinks it's "freeware" or not.

The view does not change the fact that Inkscape is free software. If people want to donate to fund "that freeware project called Inkscape", is their money any less useful in the project? Does their input as a user matter less? We can tell them it's free software and educate them on what that means without evangelizing, or devaluing them as users because they happen to be stuck with Windows or MacOS as an operating system for now.

I don't think that supporting proprietary formats and technologies is a
must if free and open technologies can provide the same degree of
flexibility.

So if a client sends you an Illustrator file, you're going to tell them.. what exactly? Go re-do it in open source software?

Good luck with that.

Quite the other way around, supporting proprietary technologies usually
is an obstacle for progress.

Only if you have sway in the professional market. Inkscape doesn't have that much sway at the moment. It's main obstacles are actually that it doesn't work with the industry formats that are used by professionals. You may have noticed the some of the open standards have been holding Inkscape back for quite some time now in terms of functionality with the new SVG standard having not been fully agreed upon for years. We still don't have multi-page documents for this reason. You have to have sway in the market before you can push in the direction you want. We don't have that yet.

I can understand that sometimes is inconvenient when interacting with
workflows based heavily on proprietary formats, but if we don't push for
open standards that situation will perpetuate

We can push, just not until we have sway. We don't currently have any. If we push now and draw a line the industry moves right along without us, and leaves us standing back there, behind our self-imposed limitations.

And it's not just about ideals. It has a practical side too: see how the
vfx industry gradually moved to open standards like EXR which eventually
made collaboration easier without having to deal wih the multiple
drawbacks of supporting proprietary formats.

Oh definitely. I'd prefer if everyone used open standards. I'm just not willing to deny service to people who have to use proprietary formats because there are not equivalent open ones currently. There has to be a better open source solution to make that professionally viable for most people/companies.

> David Revoy switched from GIMP to Krita, and when he did he
> found a
> welcoming project that paid attention to his needs as an
> artist.
>
> Like supporting .psd Photoshop format to be able to work with other
> industry artists without requiring them to learn a new software
> package.

It's their choice. The risk is that people starts using only PSD by
default because it allows easier interaction with Photoshop.

Krita is still not popular enough to push. Once they are, they can... but they also may not need to. If their software is ubiquitous with digital painting, then they become the new standard. They will also soon be able to provide a solution that's better than Photoshop, and they will have the user base to make the changes they want to see in the industry. It's because they didn't draw their line too early that they may have a chance at getting big enough to make a change.

That weakens the possibility of an open format and puts a toll on the
development of Krita, that has to be always up-to-date with watever
changes Adobe introduces to the PSD format.

If users are willing to pay for that, then it's not really much of a problem. The real problem is lack of funding for the project if they don't.

And we're not even talking about the possible legal consequences of
supporting a proprietary format without licensing it.

Do you know about that, or are you just-sayin it might be an issue?

The GIMP project has also support for legacy PSD files. Are they evil too?

> They are adding layer-effect support too this time around I believe.

Layer effects are inspired in Photoshop's but are not necessarily
something done to support non-free workflows.

I believe it supports them in PSD format for interchange with Photoshop.

Non-destructive layer effects and adjustments are useful tools that
allow improved productivity.
Pretty much like Inkscape's filters.

Irrelevant. These are features requested by Photoshop users to provide interchange with Photoshop artists in the industry (and some things are just easier in Photoshop still).

> Exactly. If Krita didn't welcome him instead of demanding that he toss
> out all his Photoshop projects and start over using open formats,
> would he would have still been interested? Probably not. Why? Well
> it's not very welcoming to evangelize new users, and demand they
> change, and go FOSS cold-turkey.

Look, I'm a graphic designer like you, and I've been using free software
only for my professional work for the last 7 years.
I started gradually, but I could made the switch when I decided that my
freedom as a user was more important to me that some convenience and
shortcuts for my everyday work.

Then you must understand what I mean. If you've been a professional graphic designer (if that's how you make your money), then you already know everything I've told you is true. And yes, I've been doing what you have been doing. I use GIMP for everything despite the fact that Photoshop is more mature, is used by most of the industry, and is insisted upon by graphic designers everywhere. We are the strange, the few, the penguins! Lol.

I takes some effort. We should be focusing on reducing or even removing
that effort instead of making the free software behave more like
proprietary software just to make its former users feel cozy.

It's rather about compatibility. I can get around a lot of the problems with current implementations, but I do not expect everyone to do that. In fact I do not expect the vast majority of everyone to do that either. It would be awesome if everyone shared our collective vision of Free Software, and a completely open format environment, but you gain no traction by insisting upon it when you do not have the user backing yet. People will use Inkscape for a while, until they hit a roadblock. It may be a printing company that their company works with that insists on an AI file for printing. At that point, they will have to use Illustrator to do it. Now, would you rather have a user go back to Illustrator, or continue to support the Free Software project?

> And again, it's because Blender made necessary compromises. If Cycles
> were run on just FOSS software, most of that art would still be
> rendering on CPUs so hot you could cook your dinner on them.

Unrelated and not necessarily true:
An i7 running free drivers may be faster than many models of nvidia GPUs
with CUDA for rendering.

It's not "unrelated". And you know why it isn't. We are talking about proprietary drivers and software integration.

Faster? Not any recent ones. Maybe some nVidia cards from 5 years ago...

It's how it is. If you have figures that say differently, fork em over. Shoot me any processor graphics benchmarks you can find that can match the nVidia Titan series cards.

Not to mention that abusing your CPU for rendering will end the life of your computer much much faster than a GPU designed with many hundreds (or thousands) of threaded processing cores designed specifically to process graphics.

I believe you told me to "check my facts" earlier. I might offer the same advice.

> So, is it really necessary to grow a huge user base for that?
> I don't
> think so.
>
>
> Yes, it is. Blender had a fairly substantial user base before
> professional artists got wind that it was a decent replacement for
> Maya and 3DS Max.
> 14 years ago, I remember playing with it along side Maya (when it was
> still Alias Wavefront). It's reached a maturity lately that can
> compete with the big-boys, and in a lot of ways surpass them. If they
> didn't have the initial user base, it would never have gotten this
> big. If they didn't make compromises to get big, they would still be
> hobbyist. It takes small steps to climb a mountain, and it's never a
> straight path.

I don't think there's anything wrong about looking at what the
"industry" does (both right and wrong) to make decisions about how to
shape a project.
If you take a high-end program like Nuke, for instance, you can find
valuable information about what high-end users need for their work.
Does that mean that you have to copy it to be successful? Not at all.
Does that mean that maybe you should pay attention to what they did
because their audience needs it? SURE.

Who says we have to "copy"? I'm talking about compatibility, not copying. There are many things Inkscape does better than Illustrator. That does not mean that it's not useful (and often necessary) for it to work in conjunction with Adobe products.

Does inkscape need to copy Illustrator? Does inkscape need to support
the file format of Illustrator and implement all their features?
No. If inkscape provides the same or more flexibility and power than the
other program has, then it will become an interesting alternative.

Sure, why not. Let's ignore the success of programs that do, and just hope it all works out. :)

Solo artists can possibly do that. Industry artists don't have the luxury. If you're part of a team working on graphics, and you want to use FOSS software that doesn't support the file formats everyone else is using, and refuse to comply, how long you going to have that job?

PDF is an industry standard for press files. PDF is considered an open
standard. Do we need AI support for sending stuff to a print shop
because a bunch of designers and printshop owners use it as a delivery
format? NO!

YES. lol you give them what they need. Have you ever tried to open a pdf and change what's in it for a printer? It's a goddamn mess. AI files preserve all the layers, the layer names, and a lot of formatting information that makes it easy to edit. Also, some companies have software made to handle ai files in a specific way that the employees have absolutely no control over. For example the company that my company subscribes to for web services requires all web graphics be submitted in ai files because their software automates a lot based on the structure of the file. If you work in the industry, you run into these problems constantly. they are not trivial, and they often have little to do with a company's choice. Inkscape isn't visible enough to the industry (again we go back to user base) for it to be an option. The first thing they would ask is: Is it going to work with our printers, and parter companies, and what the industry expects to get our work done and get paid. if the answer is "NO!" then it's not really going to be an option.

What about the problem of interchange formats? Let's push for open
standards instead of supporting proprietary formats.

Sure, if we can agree on open standards (eventually... SVG 2), why not? Well, unless the industry doesn't support them. Then we may be a bit screwed in the same fundamental ways. ;)

On a personal level, I do push open formats. When we need an article printed, or website automated, we gotta give them what they need, not what we want them to use.

Also, what happens when there's only a handful of people working on the standards, and it takes them years (and years) to come to the full spec?

As far as I know, there isn't a formal initiative but inkscape
developers are quite open to users suggestions and requests.
But so far it's just them receiving suggestions and requests rather than
looking for users and interviewing them about their workflows.
I think it would be interesting if they took a more active approach
getting a stuff of professional "consultants" (I mean users who have a
certain degree of proficiency with the tool, use it for their work and
have a reasonable experience in the field).

Well, I'm here if they want to do any of that. I'll be glad to help.

> The main things that are lacking in terms of vector tools (from my
> perspective) are:

This e-mails got already too long. Let's leave the feature suggestions
for another time.
An IRC meeting with users and developers maybe?

At least we can agree on that much. ;)

If I were a developer, I'd have stopped reading this long ago. lol.

I think I will leave a separate email for feature requests.

I was a bit curious to see what you thought of my feature list, since you are apparently also a graphic designer.

If you've lost interest, that's cool too.

I'm also a professionl graphic designer with more than 15 years of
experience and half of that using free software exclusively, we can
share our views there.

It surprises me that you wouldn't understand the difficulties of using Inkscape in an industry dominated by Adobe products. Maybe you don't have to work for a company, or with other artists? Are you freelance only? How much of the 15 years is industry experience?

Please do not mistake my questions for disrespect, I am genuinely curious. I also have respect for people who can make most of their money freelancing as well, so there is nothing "unprofessional" about freelancing in my opinion.

Just a heads-up: working with Illustrator files is going to be high on most designer's priority list. Esp those who have worked in the field for any length of time. It's all you get from other people, customers, etc.

I did get one .xcf file for engraving once though. Even though it was the wrong format for engraving, seeing a GIMP file used in the wild it made my whole week! :D

-C