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Is there a reason (or am I wrong about it) that the most common and most liked tools for developers are mostly Open Source, while there are almost no Open Sourc

Is there a reason (or am I wrong about it) that the most common and most liked tools for developers are mostly Open Source, while there are almost no Open Source tools aimed for designers making it big?

robenkleene 7y ago
Open source projects are run by developers, why would you expect developers to make great tools for any field except development?
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  That is true, but web-design and web-development are pretty close to each other and I'm pretty sure there is a lot of people out there doing both. There is also counter-examples: KiCad is an EDA tool which is very, very close to the commercial ones. But it's a great point, we could look at the counter-examples - good Open Source tools not aimed at developers - to maybe find out why they exist and how to do it. Browsers come to mind, Android in some regards. But hopefully we can find something else than ad-delivery infrastructure.
  - monkin 7y ago
    Is there only web design and web development in this world? :)
- welly 7y ago
  Yet they do... GIMP? Inkscape? Blender? Libre Office? Firefox?? Chrome?? I'm actually not sure what you're suggesting. There are no great open source projects outside those written for development? That's clearly false.
  - robenkleene 7y ago
    As others have pointed out, web browsers are developer tools. Just because other people also use them for other things doesn’t mean they’re not core to developer's workflows. GIMP, Inkscape, and LibreOffice aren’t competitive with their commercial alternatives. Which leaves Blender, which is the exception of a high quality open source tool that’s not for developers. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think they’re two reasons it exists: 1. The comparable commercial tools are very expensive, e.g., thousands of dollars per year, versus a bit over a hundred a year for something like Photoshop. 2. Developers have a particular affinity to 3D modeling, e.g., it’s the biggest gatekeeper to various types of development like games programming and AR/VR. But I agree 100% that Blender is a fascinating exception, and I’d love to hear more theories about what’s made it so successful.
    - extralegos 7y ago
      Blender is the sole exception, but the very vast majority of the CG industry used closed source counterparts because Blender still does not compete with Maya and Houdini, especially the latter. Blender had recently made some massive improvements and that is definitely starting to change, but this is happening alongside CG artists starting to write scripts more and more, slowly becoming developers themselves. And realize Blender hails from the Netherlands, which maintains a uniquely socially favorable version of capitalism. Projects like Blender would surely have a much harder time being pursued anywhere else.
    - aloisdg 7y ago
      Blender is also used by a lot of gamedev.
    - FemmeAndroid 7y ago
      A notable thing for me as a very light amateur user, was that Blender (up until the recent 2.80) felt very foreign when compared to professional tools. It is an incredible accomplishment, but it had a notable learning curve, even if you had experience with other commercial 3d graphics software.
    - Torwald 7y ago
      > 1. The comparable commercial tools are very expensive, This was specially the case when blender was new and AFAIK command line driven. In those days a SGI machine alone was more expensive then the car of the average Blender user.
  - simiones 7y ago
    Firefox is definitely an exception. Libre Office is simply copying features from MS Office, and is rarely used in commercial settings anyway. Chrome is open source (well, Chromium, Chrome is not), but it is basically 100% developed by a commercial company which does not generally accept community contributions. I don't know enough about GIMP, Inkscape and Blender to give an opinion on how well they can be held up as examples of Open Source community tools that can replace commercial tools. Edit: actually, thinking more about this, Firefox and other browsers are much more a tool for web development than a tool for users directly - the functionality that users use is much smaller in terms of implementation than the functionality that web developers use (the layout and JS engines, and the debuggers, profilers & other development .
    - Torwald 7y ago
      Didn't Libre stem from StarOffice, a commercial product?
  - buboard 7y ago
    firefox is (also) a developer tool. Blender is also used by a lot of game developers and thats why it gets a lot of attention. Gimp, inkscape and libreoffice not so much, and it shows.
  - NotATroll 7y ago
    > GIMP, Blender Both of which are known to have notoriously unintuitive UI's, especially when compared to their commercial competitors. > Libre Office Literally just copy & paste M$ Office UI, and honestly still manages to screw that up putting things in different places.
    - monkin 7y ago
      > Both of which are known to have notoriously unintuitive UI's, especially when compared to their commercial competitors. This changed lately for both products.
  - chadlavi 7y ago
    Except for GIMP, an engineer might easily use these products regularly. and perhaps not coincidentally, GIMP is infurating trash from a UX perspective.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- necovek 7y ago
  Entirety of ML/sci-python world is not run by "developers", but by those working in the field. That's usually the driver of quality, even if pure software engineers could easily find stuff to criticise.
petepete 7y ago
There's a huge gap for a good UX design app in the Linux world. I hope Akira[0] can fill it, but I find for web stuff, with the right prototyping setup and frameworks, I can build stuff very rapidly to test out. [0] https://github.com/akiraux/Akira https://github.com/akiraux/Akira
- chadlavi 7y ago
  Figma works on Linux
antidaily 7y ago
I can't speak to the complexity of building an open source Figma. The UI isn't that crazy. But even if it existed, you would need a cloud storage solution. And the file sizes can be quite big. And then there's the ability to share project urls, so you'd need some sort of hosting setup.
denster 7y ago
Good question! I think you're right & the open-source issue could be because closer coordination is needed between product & engineering. And while I'm biased [1] (as the founder of MintData), I think the future is instead: - The line between Engineer & Designer gets BLURRED -> 0 - The line between Prototype & Software gets BLURRED -> 0 In the end, I think powerful tools that redefine how software is created will win out, but this will take some time* Hat tip to LightTable, Subform, Figma/Sketch, Framer/X, Visual Basic 6, and all the other tools that have provided us with the right inspiration. [1] https://mintdata.com https://mintdata.com
TheRealWatson 7y ago
The big players in this space aren't just trying to provide a tool that designers use to create artboards. The big thing is having a compelling story to bring in the other stakeholders, like Product Management and Engineering to participate in the digital product design and handoff. Yes, developers inspecting elements and their attributes is cool, but that's also barely scratching the surface. Think about integrating a Design System, a developer framework (React, Vue,) creating simulations/prototyping directly with the artboards (like click this button and see it navigate to this other screen). On top of all that there's cloud access and management for all these designs, and collaborative editing. All I'm saying is that the big players aren't just trying to build a piece of boxed software. They're going for platforms and a connected suite of services. It's hard to have all that as open source.
- denster 7y ago
  I think this is exactly right. High fidelity collaboration between product, eng, design, and all other stakeholders is EXACTLY what's missing from today's tooling. Figma has great multiplayer support, and we've worked hard to add it to MintData as well (bias[1]: founder here), and I think this is just the start. In general, we need better integration of this tooling with CI/CD systems and the human workflows that naturally occur today in any org of > 50 people in technical roles. [1] https://mintdata.com https://mintdata.com
  - denster 7y ago
    Just to clarify, by "high fidelity" I mean way beyond "if I click here, show this Artboard". I think we need much more powerful metaphors to define behavior as we move from prototype -> high fidelity prototype -> final, shipping software in production.
chadlavi 7y ago
Savvy developers demand open source software. A lot of designers aren't that technical, so there's not a lot of demand. Plus, designers aren't exactly positioned to just go make their own OSS design tool the same way developers are.
gitgud 7y ago
Is the opensource movement prevalent in design? I was under the impression nothing was free in the design world....
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  Creative Commons is a thing and there is large repositories for CC content. But it is true, outside of developers, nobody cares at all about Open Source and you mostly get weird looks if you try to explain. We are probably still bad at explaining it.

robenkleene 7y ago

Open source projects are run by developers, why would you expect developers to make great tools for any field except development?

turbinerneiter 7y ago
That is true, but web-design and web-development are pretty close to each other and I'm pretty sure there is a lot of people out there doing both. There is also counter-examples: KiCad is an EDA tool which is very, very close to the commercial ones. But it's a great point, we could look at the counter-examples - good Open Source tools not aimed at developers - to maybe find out why they exist and how to do it. Browsers come to mind, Android in some regards. But hopefully we can find something else than ad-delivery infrastructure.
- monkin 7y ago
  Is there only web design and web development in this world? :)
welly 7y ago
Yet they do... GIMP? Inkscape? Blender? Libre Office? Firefox?? Chrome?? I'm actually not sure what you're suggesting. There are no great open source projects outside those written for development? That's clearly false.
- robenkleene 7y ago
  As others have pointed out, web browsers are developer tools. Just because other people also use them for other things doesn’t mean they’re not core to developer's workflows. GIMP, Inkscape, and LibreOffice aren’t competitive with their commercial alternatives. Which leaves Blender, which is the exception of a high quality open source tool that’s not for developers. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think they’re two reasons it exists: 1. The comparable commercial tools are very expensive, e.g., thousands of dollars per year, versus a bit over a hundred a year for something like Photoshop. 2. Developers have a particular affinity to 3D modeling, e.g., it’s the biggest gatekeeper to various types of development like games programming and AR/VR. But I agree 100% that Blender is a fascinating exception, and I’d love to hear more theories about what’s made it so successful.
  - extralegos 7y ago
    Blender is the sole exception, but the very vast majority of the CG industry used closed source counterparts because Blender still does not compete with Maya and Houdini, especially the latter. Blender had recently made some massive improvements and that is definitely starting to change, but this is happening alongside CG artists starting to write scripts more and more, slowly becoming developers themselves. And realize Blender hails from the Netherlands, which maintains a uniquely socially favorable version of capitalism. Projects like Blender would surely have a much harder time being pursued anywhere else.
  - aloisdg 7y ago
    Blender is also used by a lot of gamedev.
  - FemmeAndroid 7y ago
    A notable thing for me as a very light amateur user, was that Blender (up until the recent 2.80) felt very foreign when compared to professional tools. It is an incredible accomplishment, but it had a notable learning curve, even if you had experience with other commercial 3d graphics software.
  - Torwald 7y ago
    > 1. The comparable commercial tools are very expensive, This was specially the case when blender was new and AFAIK command line driven. In those days a SGI machine alone was more expensive then the car of the average Blender user.
- simiones 7y ago
  Firefox is definitely an exception. Libre Office is simply copying features from MS Office, and is rarely used in commercial settings anyway. Chrome is open source (well, Chromium, Chrome is not), but it is basically 100% developed by a commercial company which does not generally accept community contributions. I don't know enough about GIMP, Inkscape and Blender to give an opinion on how well they can be held up as examples of Open Source community tools that can replace commercial tools. Edit: actually, thinking more about this, Firefox and other browsers are much more a tool for web development than a tool for users directly - the functionality that users use is much smaller in terms of implementation than the functionality that web developers use (the layout and JS engines, and the debuggers, profilers & other development .
  - Torwald 7y ago
    Didn't Libre stem from StarOffice, a commercial product?
- buboard 7y ago
  firefox is (also) a developer tool. Blender is also used by a lot of game developers and thats why it gets a lot of attention. Gimp, inkscape and libreoffice not so much, and it shows.
- NotATroll 7y ago
  > GIMP, Blender Both of which are known to have notoriously unintuitive UI's, especially when compared to their commercial competitors. > Libre Office Literally just copy & paste M$ Office UI, and honestly still manages to screw that up putting things in different places.
  - monkin 7y ago
    > Both of which are known to have notoriously unintuitive UI's, especially when compared to their commercial competitors. This changed lately for both products.
- chadlavi 7y ago
  Except for GIMP, an engineer might easily use these products regularly. and perhaps not coincidentally, GIMP is infurating trash from a UX perspective.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
necovek 7y ago
Entirety of ML/sci-python world is not run by "developers", but by those working in the field. That's usually the driver of quality, even if pure software engineers could easily find stuff to criticise.

petepete 7y ago

There's a huge gap for a good UX design app in the Linux world. I hope Akira[0] can fill it, but I find for web stuff, with the right prototyping setup and frameworks, I can build stuff very rapidly to test out. [0] https://github.com/akiraux/Akira https://github.com/akiraux/Akira

chadlavi 7y ago
Figma works on Linux

antidaily 7y ago

I can't speak to the complexity of building an open source Figma. The UI isn't that crazy. But even if it existed, you would need a cloud storage solution. And the file sizes can be quite big. And then there's the ability to share project urls, so you'd need some sort of hosting setup.

denster 7y ago

Good question! I think you're right & the open-source issue could be because closer coordination is needed between product & engineering. And while I'm biased [1] (as the founder of MintData), I think the future is instead: - The line between Engineer & Designer gets BLURRED -> 0 - The line between Prototype & Software gets BLURRED -> 0 In the end, I think powerful tools that redefine how software is created will win out, but this will take some time* Hat tip to LightTable, Subform, Figma/Sketch, Framer/X, Visual Basic 6, and all the other tools that have provided us with the right inspiration. [1] https://mintdata.com https://mintdata.com

TheRealWatson 7y ago

The big players in this space aren't just trying to provide a tool that designers use to create artboards. The big thing is having a compelling story to bring in the other stakeholders, like Product Management and Engineering to participate in the digital product design and handoff. Yes, developers inspecting elements and their attributes is cool, but that's also barely scratching the surface. Think about integrating a Design System, a developer framework (React, Vue,) creating simulations/prototyping directly with the artboards (like click this button and see it navigate to this other screen). On top of all that there's cloud access and management for all these designs, and collaborative editing. All I'm saying is that the big players aren't just trying to build a piece of boxed software. They're going for platforms and a connected suite of services. It's hard to have all that as open source.

denster 7y ago
I think this is exactly right. High fidelity collaboration between product, eng, design, and all other stakeholders is EXACTLY what's missing from today's tooling. Figma has great multiplayer support, and we've worked hard to add it to MintData as well (bias[1]: founder here), and I think this is just the start. In general, we need better integration of this tooling with CI/CD systems and the human workflows that naturally occur today in any org of > 50 people in technical roles. [1] https://mintdata.com https://mintdata.com
- denster 7y ago
  Just to clarify, by "high fidelity" I mean way beyond "if I click here, show this Artboard". I think we need much more powerful metaphors to define behavior as we move from prototype -> high fidelity prototype -> final, shipping software in production.

chadlavi 7y ago

Savvy developers demand open source software. A lot of designers aren't that technical, so there's not a lot of demand. Plus, designers aren't exactly positioned to just go make their own OSS design tool the same way developers are.

gitgud 7y ago

Is the opensource movement prevalent in design? I was under the impression nothing was free in the design world....

turbinerneiter 7y ago
Creative Commons is a thing and there is large repositories for CC content. But it is true, outside of developers, nobody cares at all about Open Source and you mostly get weird looks if you try to explain. We are probably still bad at explaining it.