5 ms·

>Turns out, even quality-wise free software is often much better than non-free, closed-source software. This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools

>Turns out, even quality-wise free software is often much better than non-free, closed-source software. This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for geeks by geeks', 'tools that big software companies need but don't provide a competitive edge/need to be OSS for adoption so they opensource' (Apple, Google, Microsoft) and companies that sell support for OSS (RedHat, Novell, Canonical, etc.) As soon as you move from IT infrastructure/dev tools there is no contest between OSS and commercial packages or they only cover small a niche. Compare GIMP vs Photoshop, Blender vs Maya/3DSMax/ZBrush, Cycles/Yafaray vs VRay/Renderman/Lux, OSS CAD tools, LibreOffice vs Office, etc. They aren't in the same league most of the time in both quality and functionality supported.

NzNz 10y ago
Your point is valid, but also incredibly narrow, the type of tunnel vision that seems to affect all computer using professional artists, who somehow started thinking they were the majority of computer users. Not only is that not the case, but you're such a tiny minority that Apple didn't shy away from dropping you all, dropping software like Aperture, simplifying Final Cut and orienting it toward hobbyists and slashing its price down to a measly $300, and all those moves are coming from the company that used to be known as the friendliest toward artists. Your kind keeps harping about "ah, my firewire port" and so and so and Apple literally doesn't care. You're not the target audience anymore, you represent nothing. The quality of open source software is, by far, when you consider most needs, more than adequate and often superior to closed source. Most of the examples you give aren't even close to being evidence of a superiority of closed source in a debate of closed vs open, they are examples of the superiority of a few specific graphic powerhouses like Adobe. Is there anything like Photoshop in the world of closed source software? It is the only one. Closed source doesn't magically make things better. There are plenty of closed source competitors to Photoshop that aren't even close to what GIMP achieves, even more so with that plugin : http://gmic.eu/ http://gmic.eu/ Which replicates almost all the most important functions of modern Photoshop. What GIMP misses, is not power, but productivity, by missing non destructive editing. On the other hand, with something like gmic, gimp is far, far more powerful than ANY other piece of software that isn't called Photoshop. Considering the extremely small amount of people who are actively working on GIMP and its plugins and that none of their are paid for it, I'd say they do an incredible job. Everything you can do in Photoshop, you absolutely can do with GIMP, for eg things like these : http://blog.patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inpainting.html http://blog.patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic... Work just as good. If you're not a professional working on deadline who truly needs a productivity boost through constant modification of something you're commissioned to produce (which is where Non Destructive Editing shines best), you don't really need anything other than the GIMP. So I'll quote your first paragraph and throw it back at you: >>This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for geeks by geeks', 'tools that big software companies need but don't provide a competitive edge/need to be OSS for adoption so they opensource' Your views are only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for artists that cost big bucks which represent exactly 0.01% of the software used in the entire world'. If most people don't have a use for the things you mention, like code editors and compilers, they don't have a use for things like Photoshop either. And if we're going by % of software in use, there are far more web servers out there running open source programs that there will ever be photoshop installations. Much less packages like Maya which fill an even much smaller niche. Niche, a word you seem fond of using for talking about OSS. What is more niche between a web browser and maya?
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  Browsers fall in to the 'things we need to ship but the source being closed isn't a competitive advantage' of huge software corps (Mozilla being an outlier). I listed artist tools because that's the thing I have first-hand experience with and I'm sure others here do as well but it's faaar from being limited to that. List superior OSS alternatives to things like SAP/Dynamics/Salesforce or CAD like SolidWorks/AutoCAD. Where are all the OSS banking systems ? Every industry I've seen has their own specialized tools that cost big $ and has stuff that took years to purpose build, the sort of thing that just isn't viable under OSS model. Industrial control applications, and let's not even go to heavily regulated stuff used in medical devices and such. I'm not the one who's tunneling here, there's more software out there than dev tools, browsers and server OSes, very little of it is OSS, even less can compete on quality.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    List superior OSS alternatives to things like SAP/Dynamics/Salesforce We've been making good money moving companies from SAP to Odoo.
cyphar 10y ago
The point of the free software movement is not quality, it's user freedom. Would you prefer having an electronic heart implant that is proprietary and is "totally safe trust me", or is free software but isn't the best thing in the world to interface with. I know which I'd pick, and the same logic applies to everything else I rely on in my daily life.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  The parent comment was making a statement about quality to which I responded. And if the proprietary software has been an industry standard and deployed in millions of cases before I would have no problem taking the closed source variant. It would be nice to have the source but in most cases I wouldn't know what to do with it anyway as it requires specialist knowledge, so I'd be relying on the community vetting it vs. legal requirements for approval by the regulatory agencies, I mean it would still be better to have the source but I could live without it. Anyway my point isn't even related to preference, I'm just saying that the conditions for successful OSS software are limited to one of the models under which it makes sense commercially for the companies using it (most often IT giants), some sort of commercial support/free software deal or in rare cases it's a labor of love for geeks. Most of the software written out there doesn't fall nicely in to those categories and so OSS is not viable in those areas.

NzNz 10y ago

Your point is valid, but also incredibly narrow, the type of tunnel vision that seems to affect all computer using professional artists, who somehow started thinking they were the majority of computer users. Not only is that not the case, but you're such a tiny minority that Apple didn't shy away from dropping you all, dropping software like Aperture, simplifying Final Cut and orienting it toward hobbyists and slashing its price down to a measly $300, and all those moves are coming from the company that used to be known as the friendliest toward artists. Your kind keeps harping about "ah, my firewire port" and so and so and Apple literally doesn't care. You're not the target audience anymore, you represent nothing. The quality of open source software is, by far, when you consider most needs, more than adequate and often superior to closed source. Most of the examples you give aren't even close to being evidence of a superiority of closed source in a debate of closed vs open, they are examples of the superiority of a few specific graphic powerhouses like Adobe. Is there anything like Photoshop in the world of closed source software? It is the only one. Closed source doesn't magically make things better. There are plenty of closed source competitors to Photoshop that aren't even close to what GIMP achieves, even more so with that plugin : http://gmic.eu/ http://gmic.eu/ Which replicates almost all the most important functions of modern Photoshop. What GIMP misses, is not power, but productivity, by missing non destructive editing. On the other hand, with something like gmic, gimp is far, far more powerful than ANY other piece of software that isn't called Photoshop. Considering the extremely small amount of people who are actively working on GIMP and its plugins and that none of their are paid for it, I'd say they do an incredible job. Everything you can do in Photoshop, you absolutely can do with GIMP, for eg things like these : http://blog.patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inpainting.html http://blog.patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic... Work just as good. If you're not a professional working on deadline who truly needs a productivity boost through constant modification of something you're commissioned to produce (which is where Non Destructive Editing shines best), you don't really need anything other than the GIMP. So I'll quote your first paragraph and throw it back at you: >>This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for geeks by geeks', 'tools that big software companies need but don't provide a competitive edge/need to be OSS for adoption so they opensource' Your views are only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for artists that cost big bucks which represent exactly 0.01% of the software used in the entire world'. If most people don't have a use for the things you mention, like code editors and compilers, they don't have a use for things like Photoshop either. And if we're going by % of software in use, there are far more web servers out there running open source programs that there will ever be photoshop installations. Much less packages like Maya which fill an even much smaller niche. Niche, a word you seem fond of using for talking about OSS. What is more niche between a web browser and maya?

rubber_duck 10y ago
Browsers fall in to the 'things we need to ship but the source being closed isn't a competitive advantage' of huge software corps (Mozilla being an outlier). I listed artist tools because that's the thing I have first-hand experience with and I'm sure others here do as well but it's faaar from being limited to that. List superior OSS alternatives to things like SAP/Dynamics/Salesforce or CAD like SolidWorks/AutoCAD. Where are all the OSS banking systems ? Every industry I've seen has their own specialized tools that cost big $ and has stuff that took years to purpose build, the sort of thing that just isn't viable under OSS model. Industrial control applications, and let's not even go to heavily regulated stuff used in medical devices and such. I'm not the one who's tunneling here, there's more software out there than dev tools, browsers and server OSes, very little of it is OSS, even less can compete on quality.
- icebraining 10y ago
  List superior OSS alternatives to things like SAP/Dynamics/Salesforce We've been making good money moving companies from SAP to Odoo.

cyphar 10y ago

The point of the free software movement is not quality, it's user freedom. Would you prefer having an electronic heart implant that is proprietary and is "totally safe trust me", or is free software but isn't the best thing in the world to interface with. I know which I'd pick, and the same logic applies to everything else I rely on in my daily life.

rubber_duck 10y ago
The parent comment was making a statement about quality to which I responded. And if the proprietary software has been an industry standard and deployed in millions of cases before I would have no problem taking the closed source variant. It would be nice to have the source but in most cases I wouldn't know what to do with it anyway as it requires specialist knowledge, so I'd be relying on the community vetting it vs. legal requirements for approval by the regulatory agencies, I mean it would still be better to have the source but I could live without it. Anyway my point isn't even related to preference, I'm just saying that the conditions for successful OSS software are limited to one of the models under which it makes sense commercially for the companies using it (most often IT giants), some sort of commercial support/free software deal or in rare cases it's a labor of love for geeks. Most of the software written out there doesn't fall nicely in to those categories and so OSS is not viable in those areas.