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>I seriously think you mischaracterised your audience. I never thought most people here would use Photoshop enough to pay for it. The point was that tools exis

>I seriously think you mischaracterised your audience. I never thought most people here would use Photoshop enough to pay for it. The point was that tools exist that are worth paying form despite the poster some level up implying open source is always the answer. Being able to realize others have their tools, and you have yours, helps understand why people do pay for things you may not. >I'll gladly pay $$$ for a work-related tool I use 8 hours per day. And that is exactly the point that led into this thread. You choose your tool. Some choose Photoshop. Some choose SolidWorks. Open source is rarely the best choice for most professionals using software to do their work. It's ok for certain software developers, which is a tiny part of all professional workers using software. >And no, the poster wasn't dissing people who buy Photoshop; a good key to someone talking about themselves is the word "I" The poster wrote "Photoshop is not better, because paying in perpetuity is unacceptable" before the paragraph starting with "I". That sure looks like he's implying this choice should fit all. And before that the thread had many people claiming GIMP and Photoshop were on parity at this or that time, or under this or that condition. Those also were not "I" statements.

blagie 4y ago
> And that is exactly the point that led into this thread. You choose your tool. Some choose Photoshop. Some choose SolidWorks. Open source is rarely the best choice for most professionals using software to do their work. It's ok for certain software developers, which is a tiny part of all professional workers using software. No, open-source is often the best choice for professional workers using software. Open source has several advantages: 1) My experience is that open-source is as often better as worse than proprietary. It's random. SolidWorks is a fine example where proprietary is ahead. On the other hand, e.g. my astronomer friends use open-source tools because they're better. 2) It's eternal and archival. Things I worked on 15 years ago still work. My proprietary cloud-based project management stuff went poof as soon as the company went out-of-business. Businesses can accumulate value much more easily. 3) I work in a regulated industry. Open-source doesn't contain hostile code which calls home with telemetry, activation, etc. and might leak whatever information to some random vendor. It's automatically auditable. It doesn't require contract negotiations. Etc. 4) I have access to all of it. There are professionals who spend 40 hours per week doing the same thing, where an investment in Photoshop pays off. There are professionals who spend 40 hours per week doing a variety of things. I've always been in jobs which were more like the latter. A while ago, I was in a business which designed a piece of electronics hardware. They needed to use a tool to 3d print something (a front panel) exactly once in the lifetime of the business. One downside is lack of marketing dollars. My experience is that open source is underutilized outside of software engineering, mostly due to ignorance.

blagie 4y ago

> And that is exactly the point that led into this thread. You choose your tool. Some choose Photoshop. Some choose SolidWorks. Open source is rarely the best choice for most professionals using software to do their work. It's ok for certain software developers, which is a tiny part of all professional workers using software. No, open-source is often the best choice for professional workers using software. Open source has several advantages: 1) My experience is that open-source is as often better as worse than proprietary. It's random. SolidWorks is a fine example where proprietary is ahead. On the other hand, e.g. my astronomer friends use open-source tools because they're better. 2) It's eternal and archival. Things I worked on 15 years ago still work. My proprietary cloud-based project management stuff went poof as soon as the company went out-of-business. Businesses can accumulate value much more easily. 3) I work in a regulated industry. Open-source doesn't contain hostile code which calls home with telemetry, activation, etc. and might leak whatever information to some random vendor. It's automatically auditable. It doesn't require contract negotiations. Etc. 4) I have access to all of it. There are professionals who spend 40 hours per week doing the same thing, where an investment in Photoshop pays off. There are professionals who spend 40 hours per week doing a variety of things. I've always been in jobs which were more like the latter. A while ago, I was in a business which designed a piece of electronics hardware. They needed to use a tool to 3d print something (a front panel) exactly once in the lifetime of the business. One downside is lack of marketing dollars. My experience is that open source is underutilized outside of software engineering, mostly due to ignorance.