CC vs FOSS counterparts from the dev's vintage point

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Will the shift to Creative Cloud by Adobe Corporation bring changes
to what and how the developers of Free Open Source Software do?
If you're a person like me who likes to know what's under the hood and eager to know
what's going on in the world of free graphics applications, this article by Alexandre Prokoudine
may be an interesting read for you (as well as the entire LGW blog).
Alexandre is a part of GIMP, darktable and Inkscape teams from Moscow.
He's in constant touch with Krita, MyPaint and Blender teams.

Odinbc · **Posted:** Sun May 12, 2013 12:25 pm **(#2)**

K1TesseraEna, Thanks for the link that's an excellent overview!

Griatch · **Posted:** Sun May 12, 2013 5:45 pm **(#3)**

A very interesting article, thanks for the link. It's always good to see a "realistic" take on FOSS vs Commercial software, and this from an active developer (who supposedly knows what he's talking about after all).
.
Griatch

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16161

That is a great article.
I am excited to hear a new foreground selection tool is in the works.Hopefully it is RGGJAN's work.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

I was pleased to learn that the node editor project isn't abandoned and will be eventually released
although as standalone application.

Vector layers are possible with GEGL :yes

but need user interface reworked and dedicated developer.

"LoJaggy and LoBlur samplers is currently postponed" - that's a sad news,
GIMP needs a better resampler to properly reduce/downsample and warp images.
The project is being crowdfunded and hasn't yet reach the goal.

On a side note, GIMP developers should learn from the Blender team how to fund their projects.
Blender has become FOSS after 100,000 euros payoff to the original owners and the key Blender dev's
are being paid by the Blender Foundation Institute. Mini-donations can really help gimp.
I've been donating for 5 month now, a small amount of money charged to my credit card is way
better and easier to deal with than paying a lump sum. Hope more ppl will donate.

Brogun · **Joined:** Apr 29, 2012 **Posts:** 110

I think the key difference between Blender and Gimp development is that the Gimp devs have mentionned that working on Gimp is a spare time hobby for them, they have their job on the side.

While the Blender development is the devs full time job, they have the foundation that manage donations and founds and that are using them to pay the core developers to maintain and bugfix Blender every single day (and they do a wonderfull job at it), and from time to time give some founding to another one for a specific work.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Brogun wrote:

I think the key difference between Blender and Gimp development is that the Gimp devs have mentionned that working on Gimp is a spare time hobby for them, they have their job on the side.

I believe core gimp devs Michael Natterer and Oyvind Kolas are full time, don't know about Peter Sikking, thou.
Some project are crowd-funded (e.g. Nicolas Robidoux), most of the non-core development is on free-time, do-when-I-can basis,
some big things done by volunteers who are not a team (Elle Stone is a vivid example)
And I know for the fact there were thick wallet sponsors for specific 2.8 features development.

Brogun wrote:

While the Blender development is the devs full time job, they have the foundation that manage donations and founds and that are using them to pay the core developers to maintain and bugfix Blender every single day (and they do a wonderfull job at it), and from time to time give some founding to another one for a specific work.

I don't see any difference in funding possibilities between the two.

Blender Foundation is not some charity organization that pays Blender devs. It is THEM and exists on Blender community donations.
What prevents GIMP devs from doing the same? GIMP receives donation in a variety of ways
- Microdonations, even bitmoney are accepted. They are not that poor as it may seem.

At the end of the day it all comes down to how well you get your project organized, advertised and prioritized.

Yes, Blender has daily builds, but they are not compiled daily by the humans, the devs submit fixes to the svn trunk, the builds
themselves are actually compiled by the buildbots. It does not require additional workforce.