If you can replace #Adobe tools in your workflow today, great, more power to you! Not everyone can, sadly.

Tools like @inkscape, @Krita and @Blender are fantastic and built with love and energy and care. But in many cases they are still not an option for a lot of creative types.

So support them if you can. Use them if they work for you. Help improve them if you have the skills (that includes writing documentation, and working on better UI/UX!).

The better they get, the weaker Adobe becomes! 👀

I am a big advocate for #FreeSoftware as really the ONLY way for consumer protection in terms of the software we use.

I would never tell someone to not use Adobe for work on their work computer. My workplace needs me to use Windows and many proprietary software on my day job.

That is a very different think than your personal computer at home. And I think many who use Adobe stuff for hobbies could probably switch to freedom-respecting software and still do everything they want to.

in a business environment, the freedom-disrespecting EULA of proprietary software is an agreement between the software co and an other business, so in that case it does not bother me.

For me personally, I'd rather not agree to terms like that (sometimes I do, because compromises, but that is an other topic).

being a professional creator does not necessarily mean "business".

Many fedi creators, bringing us whimsy and wonder, are professional in the sense that they support themselves through their work (for example, via Patreon and similar services), but do not necessarily run a "business".

And even if they do, how is it not outrageous that a behemoth like Adobe is holding small creators hostage like this?

Why should we turn of empathy just because a small creator runs a "business"? 👀

I'm not talking about "empathy".

My post is about that as a free software activist, I'm not going to advocate that professionals use free software, because professional use merits different considerations than personal use.

Anything else you read into my posts was not there.

It's more imperative that professional tools be owned by their craftsman. And i use professional to mean "commercial activity in the service of others"

Free software is just as much about mitigating risks, sharing liabilities and participating in the future of the tool development. For startups it's access, but larger firms should look for stability and control

Of course, you have to pay up front for free software development. Not so for off the shelf products

There is a time cost to learning a new system. And a lot of people don't want to pay that cost to wean themselves off a proprietary software.

(A lot of "poor UI" complaints are really "UI is not identical to what I trained on").

But that has to be weighed against the risk!

At any moment, a proprietary single-supplier can choke you right out of business, by suddenly deciding to charge (or charge more) for access.

That's my main business reason for FOSS tools.

in the broader thread there are plenty of examples of specific functionality that is missing from FLOSS alternatives. It's not just "I don't like that the button layout is different".

@doctormo @nicemicro

Specific examples are great. They're solvable, ready to bake bits of work.

What's missing isn't the functionality, it's the organisation needed to construct them.

Right. But for those changes to be made, it is the coders, who need to do the work. While features are missing for the business use case, advocating #FreeSoftware for the business users will make minimal impact.

Unless of course you can convince the business owners to pay for the missing features to be implemented, while they keep paying for the proprietary software that lets them pay the bills now.

A bounty system could also fill this role.

If, for any given use case, only one or two features are missing from adopting a FLOSS alternative to a proprietary option with a yearly license fee, it could make financial sense to pay the one time bounty over a yearly fee.

There is a problem with bounties.

An independent programmer may have the ability to do the work, but the bounty will only pay the first solution. Not the best. The first.

This creates some awkward incentives and disincentives.

Why do the work when some better-funded other can sweep in and take the prize? Especially, why do it "right", when quality isn't the metric?

I think a commission approach may often be better.

@maswan @nicemicro @doctormo @rysiek