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The Affinity and Canva Pledge
(affinity.serif.com)
cough cough
Aged like milk…
It’s 2 years ago
That is pretty old for milk.
Once bitten twice shy.
I would like to believe the pledges were positive news. But Affinity has already broken their promise on acquisition, so I’m having a hard time now taking their word on licensing.
What was the context for this? Were they denying rumors of a 2022 acquisition?
Long story short:
- They pledge to keep the status quo. (IE perpetual licenses in new versions)
- Development is going to speed up.
- Subscriptions are 99% coming. (Albeit optional at least at the start)
- Free in schools. (IE training new artists in the Canva ecosystem. So they can be milked later. Here's a personal anecdote: Maya, the paid 3D alternative to Blender is free in schools. Come out of school and it's 235$ a month)
&
- Now throw all those pledges out because words mean nothing. This is not a partnership, this is an acquisition, and unless the contract is provided for us, in writing of the agreed upon terms. Nothing else matters but the actions that we'll see in the near future.
This all feels a lot like any low- or mid-range CAD suite that gets acquired by Autodesk, Siemens, or PTC. Promise enough to avoid a revolt, but start eroding with the next release.
The educational licensing for lock-in is also par for the course. It can be done well (Rhino 3D is legendary for letting small-shop designers use their cheap edu license forever, even commercially), but generally it's just there to maintain the supply of baby drafters and get subscriptions from employers.
But Blender is also free in schools, so why not use that?
Because Maya is the industry standard and while Blender and Maya are very similar, they aren't identical.
I thought Blender was the standard. I always thought of it as the only instance when the FOSS tool was the standard.
Every single team I’ve worked in that needed a 3D creation tool has been on Maya. Certainly in the games industry it’s the 99.99% standard.
Never has been. It's slowly making inroads for things like previs on movies. But it's not a standard in vfx workflow etc. Despite being pretty usable. Standard issues apply. They already have a workflow and are loathe to change it if it works for them. Often open source is perceived not to have much support behind it like a commercial product would. (Why companies like Red hat exist) And most people aren't trained in it. Though that's a catch 22 that will likely work itself out over time.
Blender is not a CAD program. Basically, this means 3D models are more freeform. In CAD, everything is done with measurements.
Blender is used for 3D artists all around schools. CAD software is used for engineers and such.
Edit: and Affinity is not used for 3D modelling at all. It's for images.
If the assignments are in Maya, you'll have a hard time passing the class in Blender.
The industry has shown us how they absolutely cannot be trusted, while FOSS applications have shown us they are sustainable and will always put the user's interests at heart, with Blender being a prime example.
We have to stop funding closed source software, enshittification is inevitable.
If we all donated the price of Affinity's perpetual licence to Krita, Kdenlive, and Inkscape, we'd have a suite of tools that could outcompete them all, and never have to worry about another acquisition.
Totally agree, but the thing that makes me angry is that many, many open source projects miss this opportunity because of absolutely garbage UI/UX.
Look at LibreOffice, for example. Lots of features that do more than what people need from MS Office most of the time, but even I cannot bring myself to use it long term because it's UI/UX is trash.
The open source industry has the problem that its devs think functionality is 99% of what matters, and most users disagree.
We need to have some project that is crowd funded to hire some awesome designers and UX people and have them constantly working on important open source projects. I'd sponsor that in a heartbeat.
This is why I love the Gnome desktop, while some decision are definitely controversial, they really put the user experience first. All libadwaita apps have the same basic styling and layout, so it's always clear what you can and can not do. Libadwaita apps are just a joy to use, although some are a bit too basic for my liking
I've actually been pretty impressed with LibreOffice as of late. It's fairly easy to adjust the theme (they have proper dark theme support now!) and layout to something pretty darn cozy feeling. Maybe for a power-user it's not enough, but for my simple needs, like fiction writing and simple documents, I honestly can't complain, they've done a solid job. Could it be better? Sure. But it's in a good place, IMO.
I think GIMP is a better example of a really user-hostile UX. That, almost more than any other open-source app, needs a UI overhaul.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
How many truths in just a few words.
This is like when bluebeam was bought. Bring on the enshitification and monthly subs then phase out support for perpetual license versions until the product isn't worth using anymore.
I mean it's reassuring, but I'm still cautious.
At this point, I may as well enjoy it for as long as it that's. I already bought V2 when it came out, so at least I'm set for a while.
At least that’s one plus with actually buying software vs renting it like Adobe. If they close down/go belly up, I still have what I paid for.
True, but people who purchased Photoshop outright also still own it. It's just super old and lacking most of today's features.
That will eventually happen to affinity I’m sure, but at least affinity is ~5% the price a perpetual CS6 license was.
I bought v2 because they built faith and trust with v1. Well That's gone. Time to move on.
I don't even know what to say about this whole acquisition other than I am deeply disappointed. I am a teacher, and I bought this suite to create handouts and activities for lessons every once in a while. I often share these activities and handouts with other teachers who need ideas. I don't use the Affinity suite frequently or in a professional-enough manner to justify dedicating any more of my long-stagnant pay rate to it, so if prices go up, I will have to stop being a customer whether I like it or not.
They said in the post that they want to make premium features free for education.
Also, license you bought will stay indefinitely. You can use the program you currently have. Maybe some new features won't be available, but as a non-frequent user that should be fine :).
If premium features are free for educators, I need to look into how that system works.
I’m happy to keep my V2 license, but I guarantee V2 will be shorter lived than V1 was now that a company was acquired and costs need to be recuperated.
Nothing here is contractual. It’s just words. The founders at Affinity are now employees. Canva feel no connection to the community - if their agenda for Affinity was exactly the way things are now, there’d be no need to acquire them.
This pledge isn't worth the bits its written on.
Just got this email. It's better news at least but I'm not totally convinced by it just yet.
Hahahahaha.
In 5 years time they'll whittle the pledges down a bit.
In 10 they'll remove it altogether.
Well, at least they’re not being purchased by Adobe.
"At least it's not Adobe" is such a cope.
For sure. When they had our livelihood by the balls because ‘industry staaaandaaaard’ then they stick it in a perpetually cranking vice called subscription model, we reach for any cope available. Its been decent cope and now we need a new cope.
inkscape needs more contributions, both financially and in the way of code.
The new advanced snapping system is as good or better than Affinity, path effects are an experimental feature that allows you to do batch shaping of a paths nodes using logical and mathematical parameters, CMYK support has landed and Inkscape is charting it's own SVG standard specifically for vector graphics, design and drawing.
The font handling was my biggest gripe, but even that's gotten better.
Besides the lack of art boards and certain other "nice to have's", I think I'll be switching to Inkscape as a replacement.
Or what? If they back down do they execute the executives in charge? This means nothing.
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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