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Krita Foundation: Update
- zitterbewegung 9y agoThis is great! I'm not a user but, with all this hubub I am feeling like I should try it over the weekend or lunch (I do abstract art). Everyone that seems to use the software has given glowing reviews.
- paki123 9y agoAny tips on how to get better or any good resources/communities to learn from? I've been messing with gimp and use to do abstract art on Photoshop, but haven't for a long time because I got disheartened
- hex12648430 9y agoIf you're looking for Krita-specific resources I can recommend this course by David Revoy. It goes over pretty much everything there is to know about Krita and has been a huge help to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAs-UMLB90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAs-UMLB90 It's in French but you can enable English subtitles and those seem pretty good. As for getting better as an artist in my opinion nothing beats just practicing a bit everyday and knowing what your tools can do for you. Having some knowledge about fundamentals like composition, balance and color harmonies will also help a lot. You can find a ton of tutorials about these subjects on youtube. Edit: I just noticed that the second part of the course doesn't have any subtitles yet. It's a shame but it's probably still worth quickly scrolling through it to get an idea about what the software can do.
- baldfat 9y agoI think you are going to love it. I also do a little abstract work and man there is nothing that really touches Krita for doing my kind of paintings. Just if you are coming from a non-painting program its going to give you a few fits at first.
- deft 9y agoWarning: conspiracy below What's with PIA buying out IRC networks and 'donating'/funding so many OSS projects? It's weird. On freenode other VPN services have been banned. What's their goal with krita? PIA doesn't have FOSS. Why are they sponsoring so many FOSS projects?
- neonnoodle 9y agoAdvertising to FOSS nerds who are more likely to become their customers. There are a lot of VPN services out there and it probably helps them stand out from the crowd as legitimate and not creepy or fly-by-night.
- adam12 9y agoYes, smart advertising. I use PIA every now and then when I go on trips. Seeing this donation made me feel really good about choosing PIA.
- brink 9y agoIt would be nice if this kind of philanthropy were more common so that it would no longer be weird. I've found PIA to be more of a company of principles than profits. They were booted out of Russia due to their refusal to compromise on their logging practices. Not every company has to be so money obsessed, especially those who don't have to face the pressure of outside investors. Hogging money can only bring so much happiness. There's also a ton of positive PR involved with the tech-savvy community (their consumer base) when donating to foundations / projects like this.
- Confiks 9y agoNever waste a good crisis, or why you should sometimes be foolish to harvest your accumulated merit.
- publicfig 9y agoThis is great to hear, glad to see good FOSS projects get the help they need. I only have a little bit of experience with Krita, but it's always been in my mind as a go-to if I ever need those tools. It does seem a bit misleading, however, to not update the top bar to include the new funding (unless it just hasn't been updated yet). I know a lot of people will see the first blog post but not the second, and I hope the intention isn't to trick them into thinking they are still in a financial emergency (not that you shouldn't still donate)
- boudewijnrempt 9y agoThe top bar only takes data from paypal, not bank transfers :-(
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoWould probably be pretty easy to manually mix in bank transfer data.
- Freak_NL 9y agoThe donation page didn't say anything about a reference to include with an IBAN-transfer (aside from the Krita foundation name), but I guess most of the incoming funds will be donations anyhow. Boudewijn: Sterkte met de afwikkeling van de BTW-ellende.
- boudewijnrempt 9y agoDank je -- vandaag kwam het sponsorgeld van Private Internet Access binnen, en ik heb gelijk betaald. Closure! Ik ben nu wel een uitgerekt elastiekje...
- 0xFFFE 9y agoHonest question, why so much negativity towards someone who wants to donate 20k to a good cause?
- kuschku 9y ago.
- calcifer 9y agoSurely you are not just going to throw out such an inflammatory statement without substantiating it, right?
- kuschku 9y ago.
- coldtea 9y ago"Took over" meaning, in substantial terms?
- pyre 9y agoI'm sorry, but "taking over snoonet and freenode" is a lot more than "I donated some money with strings attached." It's like being afraid of (any) people investing in your company because they might try to execute a hostile takeover. Present us with evidence of money being donated with strings attached, not of PIA buying out projects that they have donated to in the past.
- boudewijnrempt 9y agoThere are no strings attached. I was really surprised when they contacted me on IRC, but they already sponsor other orgs, like the Gnome Foundation or Freenode, as you can see on their frontpage: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ .
- bane 9y agoHuh, I just made an account with the the PIA folks. Glad to know that my very reasonable monthly fee is helping to support great projects.
- the_common_man 9y agoVery nice, they actually sponsor some really big things like EFF, Gnome. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-sponsor https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-spo... . Thank you privateinternetaccess!
- noir_lord 9y agoAvoiding the use of the word 'synergy' it makes sense for them to do that, I'd imagine that the techy market makes up a good chunk of their market and more importantly is the part that answers questions like 'I'm worried about my privacy how do I protect it?' Something I answered a week or so ago when my 60 year old Mum asked me about it (she'd seen a news story about what our Dear Leader and Rudd where up to this time).
- buovjaga 9y agoRecently they started sponsoring Kiwi IRC development: https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI... Elsewhere in this HN thread, their acquiring of IRC networks was presented as a threat. I had not heard of the Snoonet deal so I went and looked and the announcement paints a very different picture: https://snoonet.org/updates/56-snoonet-joins-the-privateinternetaccess-com-family https://snoonet.org/updates/56-snoonet-joins-the-privateinte... "Because I was about something more than myself, the owner, and director of marketing took a great interest in our mission. After speaking with them for a bit I came to learn that they grew up on IRC and valued it so much as it's where they started off, like many of us learning to program, network with others, and run our community live chats. [...] I then traveled to the owner's house with some slight expectations, and some doubt – do nice things just happen to us? To my surprise, I was blown away after playing endless rounds of Mario Kart, and witnessing them hard at work with what they believe in."
- williamle8300 9y agoYou guys should use the business model that the makers of Sketch use (Bohemian Coding). You pay a one-time fee $99 to download the app with all available features and new features for one year (365 days). After 365 days, when the Bohemian Coding team builds new features you have to pay $99 again to get those features... etcetera. It's a great business model because you get the best of both worlds (one-time, and subscription model). This gives you capital to get started, and bootstraps your company as the software matures.
- boudewijnrempt 9y agoThat's a bit hard when all the code is licensed as GPLv2+ and there are about 600 copyright holders :)
- mikekchar 9y agoI don't think it's a terribly good idea for Krita, but you can make it work. GPL does not stop anyone from selling either the binaries or the source (you just have to supply the source if you supply the binaries). What theoretically brings the price to zero is that you don't have exclusive right to sell -- other people can undercut you. However, in practice, you can actually sell the application because quite a few people don't care if they can get it for free. For an example check out TOME [0]. It's a GPL game that's also available on Steam. It has a kind of online mode and the author has stated that something like 70% of the people who play online have paid. What I find even more interesting is that he has exclusive DLC for paying customers and it is also licensed under the GPL. You can only get the content from the author and only if you have paid. Now, nothing is legally stopping others from distributing that content, but nobody does as far as I can tell. One other interesting thing is that while you can't stop people from undercutting your price, you can stop them from selling under your trademark. So if you were Krita, you could specify that only officially licensed versions could be called Krita, and you are free to distribute the code under a different name. Branding is worth something (strangely) and this can keep your customers. Like I said, I don't think it's a good idea for Krita, but it's far from impossible. [0] - https://te4.org/ https://te4.org/
- 9y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 9y agoWow, go PIA. I've been a member for years now with no problems (being able to select different locations helped a lot back in the day where League of Legends would actually give half the ping if I routed through Toronto). Their dedication to supporting OSS projects just reinforces my support.
- kronos29296 9y agoGlad to see FOSS in trouble got a good Samaritan on time. Need more people like this.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- X86BSD 9y agoThis warmed my tiny little black heart. I am glad to see the results were positive!
- anigbrowl 9y agoVery good of PIA to sponsor this worthy project. This episode, and previous ones with NumPy, Octave and other open-source projects have got me thinking: would it be worth adopting Swedish-style radical transparency and publishing a project's financial status and balance in a standardized format, so that it could become a standard item in a Github repo? Too often projects die for lack of interest or slow down for lack of funding and it's not obvious because many people don't like asking for money, especially if making money isn't their primary goal. When they do run into a cash crunch, it's embarrassing for them and potential donors have to evaluate the project in the light of a financial failure rather than its best aspects, albeit a tiny failure of cash flow rather than the epic fails of overconfident commercial bets. And there lies a secondary problem. Because many open source innovators aren't motivated by money, they often don't have a clear vision of how money could help them, and avoid dealing with it because the pursuit of it will take up too much of their head space and distract them from the artistic/ design/ development/ investigative/ scientific/ whatever work they are doing. There's tons of work being done without finance or monetization of any kind that could definitely benefit from both, but where the doers don't wish to be distracted by the questions that surround maximizing ROI. Could a fully transparent non-profit or non-extractive funding model attract interest and participation from investors, patrons, and commercial sales people who understand and like financial infrastructure well enough to support the specialist producer rather than just maximizing short-term return - in other words, to share some of the structural benefits of working within a firm without the authoritarian and political pressures that normally accompany employment?
- jnbiche 9y ago> This episode, and previous ones with NumPy, Octave and other open-source projects have got me thinking: would it be worth adopting Swedish-style radical transparency and publishing a project's financial status and balance in a standardized format, so that it could become a standard item in a Github repo? This is a great idea, particularly if there were some way for solo maintainers to flag/indicate that they're having financial problems and so close to abandoning the OS project for a better-paying job. Many widely-used OS projects are not run by not-for-profits but rather by individuals. But I really like the idea of a standard financial report in the github repo, are there any existing standards we could use for this? Like from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) or similar? If this catches on, there could even be an aggregator website that publishes monthly reports of all participating open source projects' financial status, with charts, flourishing projects, projects in distress, etc, and links for potential donors to click to donate.
- lkurusa 9y agoThis made me switch to PIA. Thank you!