On Sat, May 9, 2015 at 6:15 PM, C R wrote:
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
BBB was released in 2008, _way_ before Cycles time. And so was Sintel.
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
There has been no newer survey, but this should give you a slightly better idea:
http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/the-big-issues/
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.
Doesn't work for GIMP all too well, though. I suggest you think of Blender more in terms of "providing education", "growing an ecosystem" etc. Again, that will give you a slightly better idea.
We could immediately up the excellence and quality of Inkscape, as well as professional user base, by being able to read and write the file formats that work with industry-leading tools like Illustrator.
Inkscape opens both .AI and .CDR. What other industry-leading apps do you know?
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.
I'm sorry, but I'll have to facepalm here. David joined the fun around 2010, when there was no support for PSD support in Krita _whatsoever_. The PSD plugin was written about two years ago. The reason was that he had to jump between GIMP-Painter and MyPaint with his OpenRaster files all the time, so he eliminated this by switching to Krita. If you argue history, at least please study it :)
So, imho, there are a number of things that come before growing a massive userbase. And if we are going to use loose terms as "popularity", I'd say "credibility" should come first.
"credibility" is just as nebulous a term. At least "popularity" is quantifiable by number of users = user base.
That makes no sense whatsoever, and I can argue about that till I'm blue in the face :)
Photoline is probably about as much used as GIMP. How much have you heard of it? Have you seen astounding work made with Photline that you can recall immediately? I bet you haven't. Because, like many free/libre projects, this proprietary app doesn't do enough PR/marketing. They exist on the edge of the world dominated by Photoshop, while providing about as many core/advanced features required to get complex work done.
There is no fixing that with quantity. This is not how marketing works.
We could put together Inkscape showreels of this and post it on social media platforms and Youtube. That will get people of all types interested in Inkscape.
Posting won't do it. Sharing and promoting might. Talking to leading online magazines and writing articles for them might. Writing for Envato et al. might.
Alex