14 ms·

Krita fund has no corporate support

304 points by moelf 3y ago

scrpl 3y ago
That's just sad. Open Source support really needs to be normalized in corporate environment. Now it's more of an exception than the rule.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  When corporate support rolls in, project tend to turn sour. Demand from the corporate entities proceed to dominate rather than voices from individual donations. Its a double edged sword.
  - raincole 3y ago
    And the examples are? Cause the counter examples are phenomenal like Blender and Linux.
  - scrpl 3y ago
    That's because many corporate "donations" are not so much a donation as a way of soft-buying a feature. It's hard for businesses hyperfocused on short-term gains to understand a long-term value of, for example, supporting an alternative for an industry-dominating Adobe toolkit. But the value is there.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      Long-term value that's hard to define doesn't translate well to stock price especially when any investment also helps competitors who aren't investing anything into the project.
  - AraceliHarker 3y ago
    Krita is accepting corporate donations.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Khara threw a bag of pachinko money in Blender's face to make the last Evangelion film work, and it was fine. I guess that was a rare occurrence that they desperately and so purely needed a tool they can hand to broke freelancers without frantically searching for keygens, but it can totally happen when incentives are right.
- masukomi 3y ago
  I agree, but in this particular case i have to ask... how many companies are actually USING Krita? My impression is that the vast majority of places that need software like that use Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, or Affinity Photo/Designer.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > how many companies are actually USING Krita? Assuming a product that advertises its lack of corporate support won’t be super welcoming of commercial users.
  - Gualdrapo 3y ago
    That's exactly the problem. Not only that they use privative products - it's that people think about Krita as an alternative to Photoshop, as Krita is intended for digital painting rather than general raster image manipulation. Hence narrowing the target of Krita to a much smaller audience.
    - fluoridation 3y ago
      To an extent, it is, since a lot of artists use PS to draw/paint. For those people, Krita is indeed an alternative to PS.
  - miniupuchaty 3y ago
    I see it used by concept-art artists in gamedev studios from time to time.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Probably not many if you don't count small individual art studios - the mobile gacha game industry(and anime animation to some extent) don't standardize art styles and pipeline art production as done in American movie and comic industries, but relies on intimate collaborations with external, individual artists for creative components. So they mostly only import (Krita-exported) PSD into Ps, or even if Krita was used professionally on the floor by employed artists, choice of tools would be up to artist's discretion and might not become a corporate talking point in the way, say, what Maya or Lightwave debate would be. Maybe OnlyFans/Patreon could throw a million or two for couple years...? But Krita is not the first choice across the board, and creators on those platform don't seem too concerned with CSP/Procreate subscriptions, so that might be a difficult path too?
- 7moritz7 3y ago
  > Open Source support really needs to be normalized in corporate environment It won't. The only real workaround right now is to simultaneously launch SaaS alongside the FOSS project and monetize that heavily.
  - basscomm 3y ago
    > It won't. The only real workaround right now is to simultaneously launch SaaS alongside the FOSS project and monetize that heavily. It can work. Paying for software is already a normal part of doing business, make this work to your advantage. For example: - In the budgeting process just add a line item for the FOSS software you're using and put a number on it that's lower than the proprietary alternative. - If you're already using the software (like Krita in this case), tell whoever is in charge of the purse strings how much time, effort, and money the software has saved the company and ask them to make a one-off or recurring payment to the project that's lower than the alternative. You'll be surprised how often they say yes (as long as they can get a receipt)
- molave 3y ago
  In a corporate setting, it will help if open source software has easy deployment configurations to track usage and ensure vulnerable versions are not lurking somewhere. Firefox for instance has this.
Maken 3y ago
But they can already support like one and a half full time developers. Krita future looks bright.
- mrbump 3y ago
  Are they really paying a full time developer only 3000 €/month?
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    That's a life changing income in some parts of the world, and a pittance for skilled knowledge work in others. I hope it's going towards someone in the former, and making the local market for tech talent that bit more competitive.
  - masukomi 3y ago
    it should be noted that european developer salaries are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than US ones. US dev salaries have been completely skewed by stupid levels of VC money. European ones not so much.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - JonChesterfield 3y ago
      Alternatively they've been completely skewed by the profit margins of the big software companies, where it turns out they print money regardless of how high payroll gets. As supporting evidence, VC funded startups pay less than said software companies. It's interesting that Europe has abjectly failed to produce anything like Google or Meta. I'm not sure what the underlying reason for that is.
      - sofixa 3y ago
        > It's interesting that Europe has abjectly failed to produce anything like Google or Meta. I'm not sure what the underlying reason for that is. There isn't a singular reason, it's a complex combination. Btw I'd like to preface this to say I'm not sure most Europeans actually want a Google or a Meta, there is aversion to "too big to fail" companies in most sectors. * investment money - VCs bet on tons of stupid things with the hope of some of them making it. Many a crappy business model has received hundreds of millions of investments to try and make it, and companies spend years chasing growth on the back of those investments without worrying about profitability. Investment in the EU is usually more conservative and grounded in reality - a business model of "we'll give it away at a loss for 10 years to get lots of market share and then increase prices to capture the market" simply won't fly here. * "Europe" isn't a single market in most important senses of that word. Each EU country has it's own language (okay there's some overlap like Czech and Slovak, Belgium and France/Netherlands, Ireland and UK before Brexit, but generally), laws, regulations. A single business can't just immediately serve the whole of the EU without doing due diligence, translations, checking what regulations might apply for them, etc. That means that the size of the potential market is limited from the start without extra investment. A French startup can only sell in France until they figure out what is needed to sell in the Spanish market, translate websites/products, hire support people that speak Spanish, etc. etc. etc. There are tons of good quality decently successful European startups, but most stay within one or a few countries. Exceptions are purely digital companies such as Spotify who can afford to sell all around the world with relatively few hurdles. * Regulations and common decency/fear - over here, a business model of "we'll fake sell medical devices" or "we'll trick people into giving us all their movements/desires/internet history and sell that to whoever wants it" will hardly fly. Not that there aren't unscrupulous people here, there are, but it'd be harder to get investment and talent to work for you. * Better... I'm going to go with social safety net, but that's only a part of it. Over here, people are generally more content and know they have things to fall back on, including retirement. FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), "grind mindset", "hustle mindset" and similar are quite rare here. People prioritise other things than work, don't live to work, and don't measure themselves (only) on work. So hustling to hit big and become massive is much more rarely seen as a good or desired thing. People often deride the EU for "lacking innovation", but IMO that's flat out wrong - those people use wrong measurements (lack of massive tech giants) to define innovation. There are tons of European startups and scaleups and mittelstands and b2b companies of all sizes that are successful and innovative. They're just not "infinite growth" global behemots, but.. do they need to be? Is that the thing that ultimately matters?
omgmajk 3y ago
Curious. After all I've heard about Krita in the last few years one would think at least a couple of larger studios would use it to some extent.
- moelf 3y ago
  the Diamond tier seems to be a studio, but yeah I totally agree.
  - egypturnash 3y ago
    ASIFA isn't a studio, it's a non-profit that exists to "promote and encourage the art and craft of animation", to quote their about page. Their most notable effort is putting on the yearly Annie awards.
lars_francke 3y ago
I want someone to build this: SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) are slowly becoming ubiquitus around the world due to regulation. I want to be able to aggregate all SBOMs within my company, have a small tool that scans my machine and creates a SBOM for all Open Source tools I use (e.g. Firefox, VLC etc.), uploads that to my corporate registry. This data is then submitted to a donation aggregator which analyzes those SBOMs and distributes my monthly donation across all those projects. It is so hard dealing with those individual donor portals and various forms to donate to foundations et. al. If this whole project could be run as a non-profit foundation itself that'd be perfect.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  Say more about this SBOM regulation. Do you have an EN standard or something you can point me to?
  - kevinherron 3y ago
    It's mostly a recommendation from what I've seen so far, but it's not hard to read this as a future requirement. CISA has been pushing it, which his my why it's on my radar: https://www.cisa.gov/sbom https://www.cisa.gov/sbom
    - Cerium 3y ago
      FDA wants electronic SBOM for future device approvals. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-excellence/cybersecurity-medical-devices-frequently-asked-questions-faqs https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-ex...
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    https://cyclonedx.org/ https://cyclonedx.org/
  - lars_francke 3y ago
    As others have already commented: The US government has added SBOMs to a proposed rule to update the Federal Acquisition Regulation. So if you want to sell to the US Government you'll have to provide SBOMs: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/03/2023-21328/federal-acquisition-regulation-cyber-threat-and-incident-reporting-and-information-sharing https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/03/2023-21... Lots of large companies require SBOMs from their supplier. In the EU we will get the Cyber Resilience Act which will make them mandatory as well in certain cases: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12536-2023-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12536-2023-... And yes, there's bascially two technical standards to provide them: SPDX and CycloneDX: https://cyclonedx.org/ https://cyclonedx.org/
catapart 3y ago
I like Krita's development ethos, but I really can't use the product at all. If I want software that doesn't respect my intentions, but provides the kitchen sink for functionality, I can find that better represented and supported in Adobe, Paint.Net, Paint Tool Sai; and those are just the raster comparisons. I honestly can't wait until design tools figure out what year it is and start developing blue-sky versions that work with multiple devices and accounts, simultaneously, to provide honed experiences for specific project work. I can't say I blame the lack of corporate sponsors, because I wouldn't - as an organization - find utility in the product. That said, it's still a shame! Seems like there would be someone out there with similar interests. I hope this post, or whatever else, helps evangelize this as a problem!
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  How would a new solution respect your intentions?
  - catapart 3y ago
    It would implement features specific to and invaluable for whatever I'm intending to work on, in such a way that I would feel like trying to do it any other way would be wasting my own time. For an example, Clip Studio Paint - a tool unabashedly designed for and advertised to comic artists - has a design concept of a 'comic panel'. This lets you drag out a panel, instead of an arbitrary shape that you will use AS a panel. The panel, also an arbitrary shape, comes with functionality like "bleed" which allows you to continue drawing outside of the panel, but will truncate that content when you de-select the panel. It includes concepts like "path rendered borders" so that you can do weird stuff with borders that you wouldn't want to do with an arbitrary shape (like have characters break through them). So, you end up with a nice little feature that can ABSOLUTELY be recreated in other programs. Nothing in that "panel" feature couldn't be done with a series of steps and possibly some macros in other applications. The problem is, it's all of that setup (wasting my time) instead of just having the feature available because it's a well-known process with well-known problems. These are the people who are best suited to know what good processes look like, and can build the best kinds of tools for those well-known processes. Of course, they have to keep up to date, but that's any software in any industry. Just to head off any assumption that I prefer CSP or something, I will say that they fall woefully behind on other stuff that is not comic related (understandable because of their history, but still a hindrance to me using it). That aside, a separate example is that every single drawing program should have the ability for you to move "tool settings" onto another device. No question. I should be able to work from my tablet, and pick colors on my phone. Or work from my desktop and change brushes or sizes or store values from one project, while I open the next desktop tab for a different project, all on my second screen. As far as I know, none of them do this. The overall point being "We've designed apps to work with data like a computer uses that data. I would like it if we started designing apps that work with data however they have to in order for humans to work with 'concepts' in whichever way they understand those concepts (to the best of their ability, which is pretty able these days)."
raincole 3y ago
I'm migrating from Krita to Photoshop lately. Don't get me wrong, I love Krita. I used it for years and I wrote ~30+ bug reports. It's a positive thing -- I won't bother reporting bugs to Adobe cause I know they don't care, unlike Krita devs. However every time I need to collaborate with someone else, they use Photoshop. They use .psd like it's an interchangeable format[1]. Out of 10+ artists I've only seen one who doesn't use PS, and it's not Krita. [1]: I know Krita can read and write .psd.
- moelf 3y ago
  is there an interchangeable format for this? .tiff? .ora?
  - raincole 3y ago
    If interchangeable format means non-proprietary then Krita's .kra is one. If it means a format designed to be used as interchangeable format then .ora. If it means one that everyone uses then none.
    - alexvitkov 3y ago
      There is one that everyone uses, unfortunately.
- sweatypalmer 3y ago
  Maybe a stupid question, but if Krita can read/write .psd then why does this matter?
  - raincole 3y ago
    Because just like the most "open source app reading/writing proprietary format" scenarios, it doesn't do it perfectly. Even if you simply import a .psd and re-export it again as-is, it will still break things like smart objects and layer blending options. It's not Krita's fault: .psd is not an interchangeable format. Implementing .psd support perfectly is basically implementing the whole PS itself. It's all the artists' "fault". But it doesn't change the fact that using Krita makes my days difficult.
whoza 3y ago
But krita.org says "Special thanks to Intel, Corporate GOLD Sponsor." What's the reconciliation between these two pages?
- moelf 3y ago
  https://krita.org/en/item/intel-becomes-first-krita-development-fund-corporate-gold-patron/ https://krita.org/en/item/intel-becomes-first-krita-developm... maybe that has ended
  - hallarempt 3y ago
    No, it's still actual, but they don't have a listing the fund.krita.org database because they sponsored us directly.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      Minor suggestion: I understand that for organizational purposes and clarity it might make sense to have them separate, but I suspect merging those stats together on this page might be better for the project overall? I suspect (but don't have evidence for this) that sponsorship tends to snowball -- corporations become more likely to sponsor products that are already being sponsored; and the harm from users thinking that the project has "enough" funding might be outweighed from the benefits of users and orgs thinking, "it's normal to sponsor Krita, we're not doing something weird or experimental by jumping on the bandwagon." Again, just an instinct though, I could be wrong, and I get that this page being part of a larger existing funding platform might make including direct sponsors more contentious or inappropriate.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      Sounds like a thing you should fix then? As a software engineer I understand what you are saying, but it is incredibly misleading then.
dmw_ng 3y ago
I genuinely wonder how much that anime waifu logo is costing the project
- numpad0 3y ago
  But that's what it's for. Same story as Photoshop and GIMP splash screens.
  - dmw_ng 3y ago
    I didn't think you meant that literally, but after paging through a few tens of google image search results for "krita samples", it seems the only thing Krita is actually used by people for is fantasy art. Compare to "corel painter samples" where the 2nd thumbnail is a fairly impressive Audrey Hepburn rendition Can't remember the last time I saw output of the style from the first search result being used to sell pretty much anything
    - numpad0 3y ago
      In case my comment sounded a bit harsh, no offense intended && taken at my side - I mean, it's an industry of its own and a rapidly exploding one, so there are enough reasons couple lesser known industry standard software exists.
- chmod775 3y ago
  Artists aren't really a crowd to display childish prejudices when it comes to anything art.
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  I’d be surprised if it is not donated.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  You don't like Kiki the Cyber Squirrel? LibreOffice nearly got a Tyson Tan mascot called Libbie the Cyber Oryx. She was silently eliminated from the initial round of votes, in favor of a bunch of half-assed attempts that included two barely modified Duolingo owls. This perceived slight of what had been assumed to be a democratic process caused such a dustup that LibreOffice decided it didn't want a mascot anymore. https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/11/13/mascot-iteration/ https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/11/13/mascot...
cornholio 3y ago
This type of software is an excellent fit for "eventually open" licenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492 This way, corporations and business users can pay to get the latest version and features just like commercial software, while the hobbyist community still gets a relative recent and feature-full release they can use for free, has source available and is guaranteed to become fully GPL code in 3-5 years. The traditional open source economic models (support and customization, services etc.) simply do not work for professional software with a large number of non-programmer users. A commercial license would allow these clients to pull resources together to allow software to be written, and eventually released as open source for the benefit of all - and they are the most interested in this because they don't want to get locked in.
- sofixa 3y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, that's pretty similar to the reasoning behind BSL, which is even more "open" than "eventually open" - code is source available, anyone who isn't a competitor can use it however they want outside of competition, and in a fixed amount of time (max 4 years) the code becomes truly and entirely free to be used however one wants, including competition.
- orlandohill 3y ago
  Another approach is to allow free non-commercial use, and to charge for commercial licenses. There are licenses that grant all the rights that non-commercial users want, but still require businesses to pay. https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/
  - cornholio 3y ago
    But that's no longer open source, and offers no protection to the users against lock in. All it takes is some change of leadership or VC funding and the permissive license will be abandoned in favor of a proprietary revenue-maximizing model. Human nature and all. What is needed is a non-repudiable commitment from the vendor that the software will be fully open source, and a business incentive for them to continue developing the commercial version; they have a few years to monetize any new features, and to continue making money they need to continue bugfixing and creating other desirable new features, as opposed to just milking the lock-in cow.
haunter 3y ago
Krita is also sold as a paid version (store version [0]) for a one time fee (never goes on sale). So unlike most open source projects it might have a more steady income already. I don't know anything about their sales numbers but according to SteamSpy they are in the 100-200k range [1] and that's one store only not counting MS and Epic. I was actually arguing for a long time that more open source projects should do the same. Be on digital stores and sell the application for a one time fee. 0, https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ 1, https://steamspy.com/app/280680 https://steamspy.com/app/280680
- danShumway 3y ago
  Krita is also evidence that this model can work in some limited instances even though the program is completely monetarily free in every sense of the word. It's not "free after X months", it's not "free but you pay for premium features" -- it's just a free download, but you can buy it in a store. There are only two reasons to buy Krita through Steam: 1. You want to support Krita 2. You want Steam to handle updating/launching And it turns out that's enough for them to get some sales. People underestimate how often users will either take the path of least resistance or purchase something just to be nice. Typically when we run into this kind of behavior it's negative, for example the struggle to try and get ordinary people to install ad blockers. But it's nice with Krita to see that human instinct more positively leveraged.
wahnfrieden 3y ago
I use this instead of Acorn/Gimp/etc now for regular web image editing (for app dev)
- cpach 3y ago
  Cool. I haven’t used Krita, but I’ve always thought of it as a painting tool. But apparently it can do more than that!
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Yes I use it only for simple utility work. It has nice advanced features that help sometimes.
exabrial 3y ago
This looks like a really neat project… But on the homepage it does say, Intel is a gold corporate sponsor? Look, I don’t have a horse in the race, but that is kind of silly :)
- fluoridation 3y ago
  They must have pulled out recently enough that they haven't had time to update that image. On https://fund.krita.org/ https://fund.krita.org/ (which is where the image links to) Intel is not listed on any of the tiers.
footlose_3815 3y ago
If their text editor wasn't a UX disaster, I'd have moved to Krita. It's so bad and it drags down the whole program. The devs acknowledge it's not great, but have not done anything to make it good enough.
- HKH2 3y ago
  Yep it does stick out. A big dialog box obscuring the view. Type a font size in the box, and if it loses focus it will reset to the original font size.
srmarm 3y ago
Is one of their top 3 supporters, the Titanium level 'User Manuals' just paying for a good backlink?
- superwalker 3y ago
  [dead]
- moelf 3y ago
  I think they could be drawing those menus with Krita
mdtrooper 3y ago
It remembers to me, the HeartBleed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed where there was only one person with salary in a important project.
chaostheory 3y ago
Im surprised that Hollywood didn’t put anything in
stratigos 3y ago
I love Krita! ;-) Happy to send em $5
winter_blue 3y ago
Why does it say "5 developers $ 17k / month"? Is that 1 developer of $17k / month? (So a $204k annual salary?) Or, does it mean 5 developers for $17k / month (i.e. a $40k annual salary?) If it's the latter, I'm highly concerned. Even in countries like India salaries like $60k USD (INR 50 lakh) has become a bare minimum for software engineers who are even the least bit talented... For a really good software developer in India, you'd have to pay circa $180k USD (INR 1.5 cr), which is still a massive discount compared to the US, since in the US that person would probably make around $350k. Where are they hiring people?
- Uehreka 3y ago
  Uhhh, $180k is an awesome developer salary in the US (as long as you’re not talking about silicon valley salaries, which most Americans aren’t). There are also definitely juniors in the US making $60k (and probably even less).
  - winter_blue 3y ago
    > as long as you’re not talking about silicon valley salaries, which most Americans aren’t Since WFH became more common, high salaries have spread across the US. Several members of my team are earning $250k to $400k (depending on their level), and are scattered across the US, and many are living super-LCOL cities. For example, one guy (who makes over $350k) lives in Utah, and around the start of COVID he bought a large house with a lot land surrounding it, for (to him) a measly $270k. > There are also definitely juniors in the US making $60k (and probably even less). Nobody should be making that little in the US. $120k is the minimum for a software engineer in the US, regardless of location. If a SWE is earning less than six figures in the US, they're certainly being swindled.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  Many open source projects have people working for free and spending a lot of time on that. Even really low wages may enable more people to do this. I spend a lot of time on developing StreetComplete, got paid only for small part of that. And I would be able to spend more time on that and willing even with relatively small funds. I think that many people would be willing to take significant pay cut to work on project chosen by them.
yuukisenshi 3y ago
The problem here to me is that Krita is simply a mess. Krita is supposedly part of the KDE project, which is committed to switching to wayland, but has 0 wayland support. In practice, that means that if you use other input devices they can have bugs that make it unusable. So it's Linux story is weak. A very bad start for a KDE app...but at least maybe on Windows it works well. Well the problem then is it does the classic blender thing of having non standard shortcuts and usage modes, except unlike blender it does so for literally no reason. Buttons in most of these programs, for certain classes of operations are standardized, and Krita just works differently for the fun of it. No justifications, just "spend a long time changing it if you want it different." The icons are also incredibly ugly and people get defensive about them. The QT thememing is fine, but the actual icons for brushes and the like look amateurish at best and really brings down the cohesiveness of the program. Certain tools are also abysmal to use. The text tool is a joke. Then you have certain operations being incredibly slow. I have worked as a professional artist for years. People here really seem to be implying photoshop is the "big dog" in the space, but this simply isn't true. I see far more CSP users than Photoshop users and among my coworkers and haven't used photoshop for anything but some post processing for years. Krita then needs to compete with CSP, and Procreate (which has gotten huge recently.) To be frank, it doesn't. CSP works mediocorely with Wine but because the input problems don't exist that exist with Krita I have taken to using that on Linux ironically because I use KDE. Krita is basically a non option for me at this point and has me considering making a GPU accelerated open source drawing app instead of suffering this current atrocious landscape.
- danShumway 3y ago
  I don't have a huge amount of experience with Krita's Wayland performance because the situation on Wayland is still sub-optimal for art in general. Tablet support has gotten much better, but configuration per-app or tied to the desktop environment still seems to be a big issue. The idea that my tablet configuration might stop working if I switch off of a desktop environment is kind of a non-starter to me. It stinks because I really want to use Wayland, but even as recently as a month ago I tried to see if I could make the switch and couldn't. Truthfully, if someone has a lot of money to dump around, devoting a few full-time developers or dropping cash on https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver would probably go a long way towards encouraging Wayland adoption from artists. As far as I can tell the issue is not that Wayland can't do tablet control on the same level as X11, it's that the tools built around those capabilities still seem immature. OpenTabletDriver looks very promising but seems to have limited device support, limited in no small part by what tablets the devs have access to (my Cintiq 32 is unlikely to get added any time soon because it is no longer being sold and was expensive and uncommon when it was on the market -- which probably means I should try to do it, but it's been tough to find the time). The NVIDIA situation is also a problem, but there's nothing anyone can do about that other than yell at NVIDIA more. ---- > The text tool is a joke. The text tool should see considerable improvement soon; the entire text engine got rewritten in the last release, the devs just only had time to get it to feature parity with the existing tools.
pavon 3y ago
At my workplace a common theme is that folks that use a piece of software heavily as part of their job use the big professional tools both because it is worth paying more for a better tool considering how much value they get out of it, and because it aids in collaborating for everyone to use the same tools. People who only use a tool occasionally are the ones using Paint.net, Krita, Inkspace, Audacity, etc. Part of that is to save money, but a much bigger part is that it's too much hassle to go through procurement when it isn't absolutely necessary. More hours would be spent paying for the tool then would be spent using it. That makes it a hard sell to get corporate donations. From the corporate perspective, the tool is completely off their radar because their employees are using it to intentionally bypass corporate bureaucracy.
- Liquix 3y ago
  Absolutely. But sometimes the best in class tool is open source (see: ffmpeg), resulting in a win-win-win for the accounting department, for the developer freed from bureaucracy, and for open source as a whole. It would be nice to live in a world where this was the case more often.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > From the corporate perspective, the tool is completely off their radar because their employees are using it to intentionally bypass corporate bureaucracy. If something is priced cheaply enough to be paid for out of pocket by an "individual contributor," but for a work purpose, that's a big deal. The bigger takeaway is that all seemingly B2B software is still B2C in disguise. On the other hand, the kind, smart people making Krita aren't in it to run a sales pipeline. Like even if the diehard, nonparticipating libertarian rationalists are right, if it's true that every person on Earth would happily be a billionaire, most people think sales isn't fun or meaningful. If you want to make the world more meaningful in your own way, I appreciate that the limit of fundraising to that goal is donations.
max_ 3y ago
Is Krita used in the corporate world? What companies or niche industries use it heavily? I thought it was more of a tool for hobbyists?
grumpymouse 3y ago
It always feels like open source enthusiasts would never pay for something themselves, but expect that their boss will for some reason. What would your boss get by paying that he/she isn't already getting for free?
- Bilal_io 3y ago
  Because we expect the person making money from the tool to help pay for it. This applies to individuals as well if the tool is making them money
- distances 3y ago
  It would help if the projects had some option to purchase a license or subscription, even if the application is open source. Lots of employees have a company credit card and the authorization to use it for small productivity purchases. But it would have to be a business expense that is easy to file, not a donation.

304 points by moelf 3y ago

That's just sad. Open Source support really needs to be normalized in corporate environment. Now it's more of an exception than the rule.

doublerabbit 3y ago
When corporate support rolls in, project tend to turn sour. Demand from the corporate entities proceed to dominate rather than voices from individual donations. Its a double edged sword.
- raincole 3y ago
  And the examples are? Cause the counter examples are phenomenal like Blender and Linux.
- scrpl 3y ago
  That's because many corporate "donations" are not so much a donation as a way of soft-buying a feature. It's hard for businesses hyperfocused on short-term gains to understand a long-term value of, for example, supporting an alternative for an industry-dominating Adobe toolkit. But the value is there.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    Long-term value that's hard to define doesn't translate well to stock price especially when any investment also helps competitors who aren't investing anything into the project.
- AraceliHarker 3y ago
  Krita is accepting corporate donations.
- numpad0 3y ago
  Khara threw a bag of pachinko money in Blender's face to make the last Evangelion film work, and it was fine. I guess that was a rare occurrence that they desperately and so purely needed a tool they can hand to broke freelancers without frantically searching for keygens, but it can totally happen when incentives are right.
masukomi 3y ago
I agree, but in this particular case i have to ask... how many companies are actually USING Krita? My impression is that the vast majority of places that need software like that use Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, or Affinity Photo/Designer.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > how many companies are actually USING Krita? Assuming a product that advertises its lack of corporate support won’t be super welcoming of commercial users.
- Gualdrapo 3y ago
  That's exactly the problem. Not only that they use privative products - it's that people think about Krita as an alternative to Photoshop, as Krita is intended for digital painting rather than general raster image manipulation. Hence narrowing the target of Krita to a much smaller audience.
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    To an extent, it is, since a lot of artists use PS to draw/paint. For those people, Krita is indeed an alternative to PS.
- miniupuchaty 3y ago
  I see it used by concept-art artists in gamedev studios from time to time.
- numpad0 3y ago
  Probably not many if you don't count small individual art studios - the mobile gacha game industry(and anime animation to some extent) don't standardize art styles and pipeline art production as done in American movie and comic industries, but relies on intimate collaborations with external, individual artists for creative components. So they mostly only import (Krita-exported) PSD into Ps, or even if Krita was used professionally on the floor by employed artists, choice of tools would be up to artist's discretion and might not become a corporate talking point in the way, say, what Maya or Lightwave debate would be. Maybe OnlyFans/Patreon could throw a million or two for couple years...? But Krita is not the first choice across the board, and creators on those platform don't seem too concerned with CSP/Procreate subscriptions, so that might be a difficult path too?
7moritz7 3y ago
> Open Source support really needs to be normalized in corporate environment It won't. The only real workaround right now is to simultaneously launch SaaS alongside the FOSS project and monetize that heavily.
- basscomm 3y ago
  > It won't. The only real workaround right now is to simultaneously launch SaaS alongside the FOSS project and monetize that heavily. It can work. Paying for software is already a normal part of doing business, make this work to your advantage. For example: - In the budgeting process just add a line item for the FOSS software you're using and put a number on it that's lower than the proprietary alternative. - If you're already using the software (like Krita in this case), tell whoever is in charge of the purse strings how much time, effort, and money the software has saved the company and ask them to make a one-off or recurring payment to the project that's lower than the alternative. You'll be surprised how often they say yes (as long as they can get a receipt)
molave 3y ago
In a corporate setting, it will help if open source software has easy deployment configurations to track usage and ensure vulnerable versions are not lurking somewhere. Firefox for instance has this.

Maken 3y ago

But they can already support like one and a half full time developers. Krita future looks bright.

mrbump 3y ago
Are they really paying a full time developer only 3000 €/month?
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  That's a life changing income in some parts of the world, and a pittance for skilled knowledge work in others. I hope it's going towards someone in the former, and making the local market for tech talent that bit more competitive.
- masukomi 3y ago
  it should be noted that european developer salaries are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than US ones. US dev salaries have been completely skewed by stupid levels of VC money. European ones not so much.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    Alternatively they've been completely skewed by the profit margins of the big software companies, where it turns out they print money regardless of how high payroll gets. As supporting evidence, VC funded startups pay less than said software companies. It's interesting that Europe has abjectly failed to produce anything like Google or Meta. I'm not sure what the underlying reason for that is.
    - sofixa 3y ago
      > It's interesting that Europe has abjectly failed to produce anything like Google or Meta. I'm not sure what the underlying reason for that is. There isn't a singular reason, it's a complex combination. Btw I'd like to preface this to say I'm not sure most Europeans actually want a Google or a Meta, there is aversion to "too big to fail" companies in most sectors. * investment money - VCs bet on tons of stupid things with the hope of some of them making it. Many a crappy business model has received hundreds of millions of investments to try and make it, and companies spend years chasing growth on the back of those investments without worrying about profitability. Investment in the EU is usually more conservative and grounded in reality - a business model of "we'll give it away at a loss for 10 years to get lots of market share and then increase prices to capture the market" simply won't fly here. * "Europe" isn't a single market in most important senses of that word. Each EU country has it's own language (okay there's some overlap like Czech and Slovak, Belgium and France/Netherlands, Ireland and UK before Brexit, but generally), laws, regulations. A single business can't just immediately serve the whole of the EU without doing due diligence, translations, checking what regulations might apply for them, etc. That means that the size of the potential market is limited from the start without extra investment. A French startup can only sell in France until they figure out what is needed to sell in the Spanish market, translate websites/products, hire support people that speak Spanish, etc. etc. etc. There are tons of good quality decently successful European startups, but most stay within one or a few countries. Exceptions are purely digital companies such as Spotify who can afford to sell all around the world with relatively few hurdles. * Regulations and common decency/fear - over here, a business model of "we'll fake sell medical devices" or "we'll trick people into giving us all their movements/desires/internet history and sell that to whoever wants it" will hardly fly. Not that there aren't unscrupulous people here, there are, but it'd be harder to get investment and talent to work for you. * Better... I'm going to go with social safety net, but that's only a part of it. Over here, people are generally more content and know they have things to fall back on, including retirement. FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), "grind mindset", "hustle mindset" and similar are quite rare here. People prioritise other things than work, don't live to work, and don't measure themselves (only) on work. So hustling to hit big and become massive is much more rarely seen as a good or desired thing. People often deride the EU for "lacking innovation", but IMO that's flat out wrong - those people use wrong measurements (lack of massive tech giants) to define innovation. There are tons of European startups and scaleups and mittelstands and b2b companies of all sizes that are successful and innovative. They're just not "infinite growth" global behemots, but.. do they need to be? Is that the thing that ultimately matters?

omgmajk 3y ago

Curious. After all I've heard about Krita in the last few years one would think at least a couple of larger studios would use it to some extent.

moelf 3y ago
the Diamond tier seems to be a studio, but yeah I totally agree.
- egypturnash 3y ago
  ASIFA isn't a studio, it's a non-profit that exists to "promote and encourage the art and craft of animation", to quote their about page. Their most notable effort is putting on the yearly Annie awards.

lars_francke 3y ago

I want someone to build this: SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) are slowly becoming ubiquitus around the world due to regulation. I want to be able to aggregate all SBOMs within my company, have a small tool that scans my machine and creates a SBOM for all Open Source tools I use (e.g. Firefox, VLC etc.), uploads that to my corporate registry. This data is then submitted to a donation aggregator which analyzes those SBOMs and distributes my monthly donation across all those projects. It is so hard dealing with those individual donor portals and various forms to donate to foundations et. al. If this whole project could be run as a non-profit foundation itself that'd be perfect.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Say more about this SBOM regulation. Do you have an EN standard or something you can point me to?
- kevinherron 3y ago
  It's mostly a recommendation from what I've seen so far, but it's not hard to read this as a future requirement. CISA has been pushing it, which his my why it's on my radar: https://www.cisa.gov/sbom https://www.cisa.gov/sbom
  - Cerium 3y ago
    FDA wants electronic SBOM for future device approvals. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-excellence/cybersecurity-medical-devices-frequently-asked-questions-faqs https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-ex...
- tapoxi 3y ago
  https://cyclonedx.org/ https://cyclonedx.org/
- lars_francke 3y ago
  As others have already commented: The US government has added SBOMs to a proposed rule to update the Federal Acquisition Regulation. So if you want to sell to the US Government you'll have to provide SBOMs: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/03/2023-21328/federal-acquisition-regulation-cyber-threat-and-incident-reporting-and-information-sharing https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/03/2023-21... Lots of large companies require SBOMs from their supplier. In the EU we will get the Cyber Resilience Act which will make them mandatory as well in certain cases: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12536-2023-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12536-2023-... And yes, there's bascially two technical standards to provide them: SPDX and CycloneDX: https://cyclonedx.org/ https://cyclonedx.org/

catapart 3y ago

I like Krita's development ethos, but I really can't use the product at all. If I want software that doesn't respect my intentions, but provides the kitchen sink for functionality, I can find that better represented and supported in Adobe, Paint.Net, Paint Tool Sai; and those are just the raster comparisons. I honestly can't wait until design tools figure out what year it is and start developing blue-sky versions that work with multiple devices and accounts, simultaneously, to provide honed experiences for specific project work. I can't say I blame the lack of corporate sponsors, because I wouldn't - as an organization - find utility in the product. That said, it's still a shame! Seems like there would be someone out there with similar interests. I hope this post, or whatever else, helps evangelize this as a problem!

actionfromafar 3y ago
How would a new solution respect your intentions?
- catapart 3y ago
  It would implement features specific to and invaluable for whatever I'm intending to work on, in such a way that I would feel like trying to do it any other way would be wasting my own time. For an example, Clip Studio Paint - a tool unabashedly designed for and advertised to comic artists - has a design concept of a 'comic panel'. This lets you drag out a panel, instead of an arbitrary shape that you will use AS a panel. The panel, also an arbitrary shape, comes with functionality like "bleed" which allows you to continue drawing outside of the panel, but will truncate that content when you de-select the panel. It includes concepts like "path rendered borders" so that you can do weird stuff with borders that you wouldn't want to do with an arbitrary shape (like have characters break through them). So, you end up with a nice little feature that can ABSOLUTELY be recreated in other programs. Nothing in that "panel" feature couldn't be done with a series of steps and possibly some macros in other applications. The problem is, it's all of that setup (wasting my time) instead of just having the feature available because it's a well-known process with well-known problems. These are the people who are best suited to know what good processes look like, and can build the best kinds of tools for those well-known processes. Of course, they have to keep up to date, but that's any software in any industry. Just to head off any assumption that I prefer CSP or something, I will say that they fall woefully behind on other stuff that is not comic related (understandable because of their history, but still a hindrance to me using it). That aside, a separate example is that every single drawing program should have the ability for you to move "tool settings" onto another device. No question. I should be able to work from my tablet, and pick colors on my phone. Or work from my desktop and change brushes or sizes or store values from one project, while I open the next desktop tab for a different project, all on my second screen. As far as I know, none of them do this. The overall point being "We've designed apps to work with data like a computer uses that data. I would like it if we started designing apps that work with data however they have to in order for humans to work with 'concepts' in whichever way they understand those concepts (to the best of their ability, which is pretty able these days)."

raincole 3y ago

I'm migrating from Krita to Photoshop lately. Don't get me wrong, I love Krita. I used it for years and I wrote ~30+ bug reports. It's a positive thing -- I won't bother reporting bugs to Adobe cause I know they don't care, unlike Krita devs. However every time I need to collaborate with someone else, they use Photoshop. They use .psd like it's an interchangeable format[1]. Out of 10+ artists I've only seen one who doesn't use PS, and it's not Krita. [1]: I know Krita can read and write .psd.

moelf 3y ago
is there an interchangeable format for this? .tiff? .ora?
- raincole 3y ago
  If interchangeable format means non-proprietary then Krita's .kra is one. If it means a format designed to be used as interchangeable format then .ora. If it means one that everyone uses then none.
  - alexvitkov 3y ago
    There is one that everyone uses, unfortunately.
sweatypalmer 3y ago
Maybe a stupid question, but if Krita can read/write .psd then why does this matter?
- raincole 3y ago
  Because just like the most "open source app reading/writing proprietary format" scenarios, it doesn't do it perfectly. Even if you simply import a .psd and re-export it again as-is, it will still break things like smart objects and layer blending options. It's not Krita's fault: .psd is not an interchangeable format. Implementing .psd support perfectly is basically implementing the whole PS itself. It's all the artists' "fault". But it doesn't change the fact that using Krita makes my days difficult.

whoza 3y ago

But krita.org says "Special thanks to Intel, Corporate GOLD Sponsor." What's the reconciliation between these two pages?

moelf 3y ago
https://krita.org/en/item/intel-becomes-first-krita-development-fund-corporate-gold-patron/ https://krita.org/en/item/intel-becomes-first-krita-developm... maybe that has ended
- hallarempt 3y ago
  No, it's still actual, but they don't have a listing the fund.krita.org database because they sponsored us directly.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    Minor suggestion: I understand that for organizational purposes and clarity it might make sense to have them separate, but I suspect merging those stats together on this page might be better for the project overall? I suspect (but don't have evidence for this) that sponsorship tends to snowball -- corporations become more likely to sponsor products that are already being sponsored; and the harm from users thinking that the project has "enough" funding might be outweighed from the benefits of users and orgs thinking, "it's normal to sponsor Krita, we're not doing something weird or experimental by jumping on the bandwagon." Again, just an instinct though, I could be wrong, and I get that this page being part of a larger existing funding platform might make including direct sponsors more contentious or inappropriate.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    Sounds like a thing you should fix then? As a software engineer I understand what you are saying, but it is incredibly misleading then.

dmw_ng 3y ago

I genuinely wonder how much that anime waifu logo is costing the project

numpad0 3y ago
But that's what it's for. Same story as Photoshop and GIMP splash screens.
- dmw_ng 3y ago
  I didn't think you meant that literally, but after paging through a few tens of google image search results for "krita samples", it seems the only thing Krita is actually used by people for is fantasy art. Compare to "corel painter samples" where the 2nd thumbnail is a fairly impressive Audrey Hepburn rendition Can't remember the last time I saw output of the style from the first search result being used to sell pretty much anything
  - numpad0 3y ago
    In case my comment sounded a bit harsh, no offense intended && taken at my side - I mean, it's an industry of its own and a rapidly exploding one, so there are enough reasons couple lesser known industry standard software exists.
chmod775 3y ago
Artists aren't really a crowd to display childish prejudices when it comes to anything art.
wodenokoto 3y ago
I’d be surprised if it is not donated.
Tao3300 3y ago
You don't like Kiki the Cyber Squirrel? LibreOffice nearly got a Tyson Tan mascot called Libbie the Cyber Oryx. She was silently eliminated from the initial round of votes, in favor of a bunch of half-assed attempts that included two barely modified Duolingo owls. This perceived slight of what had been assumed to be a democratic process caused such a dustup that LibreOffice decided it didn't want a mascot anymore. https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/11/13/mascot-iteration/ https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/11/13/mascot...

cornholio 3y ago

This type of software is an excellent fit for "eventually open" licenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492 This way, corporations and business users can pay to get the latest version and features just like commercial software, while the hobbyist community still gets a relative recent and feature-full release they can use for free, has source available and is guaranteed to become fully GPL code in 3-5 years. The traditional open source economic models (support and customization, services etc.) simply do not work for professional software with a large number of non-programmer users. A commercial license would allow these clients to pull resources together to allow software to be written, and eventually released as open source for the benefit of all - and they are the most interested in this because they don't want to get locked in.

sofixa 3y ago
If I'm not mistaken, that's pretty similar to the reasoning behind BSL, which is even more "open" than "eventually open" - code is source available, anyone who isn't a competitor can use it however they want outside of competition, and in a fixed amount of time (max 4 years) the code becomes truly and entirely free to be used however one wants, including competition.
orlandohill 3y ago
Another approach is to allow free non-commercial use, and to charge for commercial licenses. There are licenses that grant all the rights that non-commercial users want, but still require businesses to pay. https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/
- cornholio 3y ago
  But that's no longer open source, and offers no protection to the users against lock in. All it takes is some change of leadership or VC funding and the permissive license will be abandoned in favor of a proprietary revenue-maximizing model. Human nature and all. What is needed is a non-repudiable commitment from the vendor that the software will be fully open source, and a business incentive for them to continue developing the commercial version; they have a few years to monetize any new features, and to continue making money they need to continue bugfixing and creating other desirable new features, as opposed to just milking the lock-in cow.

haunter 3y ago

Krita is also sold as a paid version (store version [0]) for a one time fee (never goes on sale). So unlike most open source projects it might have a more steady income already. I don't know anything about their sales numbers but according to SteamSpy they are in the 100-200k range [1] and that's one store only not counting MS and Epic. I was actually arguing for a long time that more open source projects should do the same. Be on digital stores and sell the application for a one time fee. 0, https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ 1, https://steamspy.com/app/280680 https://steamspy.com/app/280680

danShumway 3y ago
Krita is also evidence that this model can work in some limited instances even though the program is completely monetarily free in every sense of the word. It's not "free after X months", it's not "free but you pay for premium features" -- it's just a free download, but you can buy it in a store. There are only two reasons to buy Krita through Steam: 1. You want to support Krita 2. You want Steam to handle updating/launching And it turns out that's enough for them to get some sales. People underestimate how often users will either take the path of least resistance or purchase something just to be nice. Typically when we run into this kind of behavior it's negative, for example the struggle to try and get ordinary people to install ad blockers. But it's nice with Krita to see that human instinct more positively leveraged.

wahnfrieden 3y ago

I use this instead of Acorn/Gimp/etc now for regular web image editing (for app dev)

cpach 3y ago
Cool. I haven’t used Krita, but I’ve always thought of it as a painting tool. But apparently it can do more than that!
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Yes I use it only for simple utility work. It has nice advanced features that help sometimes.

exabrial 3y ago

This looks like a really neat project… But on the homepage it does say, Intel is a gold corporate sponsor? Look, I don’t have a horse in the race, but that is kind of silly :)

fluoridation 3y ago
They must have pulled out recently enough that they haven't had time to update that image. On https://fund.krita.org/ https://fund.krita.org/ (which is where the image links to) Intel is not listed on any of the tiers.

footlose_3815 3y ago

If their text editor wasn't a UX disaster, I'd have moved to Krita. It's so bad and it drags down the whole program. The devs acknowledge it's not great, but have not done anything to make it good enough.

HKH2 3y ago
Yep it does stick out. A big dialog box obscuring the view. Type a font size in the box, and if it loses focus it will reset to the original font size.

srmarm 3y ago

Is one of their top 3 supporters, the Titanium level 'User Manuals' just paying for a good backlink?

superwalker 3y ago
[dead]
moelf 3y ago
I think they could be drawing those menus with Krita

mdtrooper 3y ago

It remembers to me, the HeartBleed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed where there was only one person with salary in a important project.

chaostheory 3y ago

Im surprised that Hollywood didn’t put anything in

stratigos 3y ago

I love Krita! ;-) Happy to send em $5

winter_blue 3y ago

Why does it say "5 developers $ 17k / month"? Is that 1 developer of $17k / month? (So a $204k annual salary?) Or, does it mean 5 developers for $17k / month (i.e. a $40k annual salary?) If it's the latter, I'm highly concerned. Even in countries like India salaries like $60k USD (INR 50 lakh) has become a bare minimum for software engineers who are even the least bit talented... For a really good software developer in India, you'd have to pay circa $180k USD (INR 1.5 cr), which is still a massive discount compared to the US, since in the US that person would probably make around $350k. Where are they hiring people?

Uehreka 3y ago
Uhhh, $180k is an awesome developer salary in the US (as long as you’re not talking about silicon valley salaries, which most Americans aren’t). There are also definitely juniors in the US making $60k (and probably even less).
- winter_blue 3y ago
  > as long as you’re not talking about silicon valley salaries, which most Americans aren’t Since WFH became more common, high salaries have spread across the US. Several members of my team are earning $250k to $400k (depending on their level), and are scattered across the US, and many are living super-LCOL cities. For example, one guy (who makes over $350k) lives in Utah, and around the start of COVID he bought a large house with a lot land surrounding it, for (to him) a measly $270k. > There are also definitely juniors in the US making $60k (and probably even less). Nobody should be making that little in the US. $120k is the minimum for a software engineer in the US, regardless of location. If a SWE is earning less than six figures in the US, they're certainly being swindled.
matkoniecz 3y ago
Many open source projects have people working for free and spending a lot of time on that. Even really low wages may enable more people to do this. I spend a lot of time on developing StreetComplete, got paid only for small part of that. And I would be able to spend more time on that and willing even with relatively small funds. I think that many people would be willing to take significant pay cut to work on project chosen by them.

yuukisenshi 3y ago

The problem here to me is that Krita is simply a mess. Krita is supposedly part of the KDE project, which is committed to switching to wayland, but has 0 wayland support. In practice, that means that if you use other input devices they can have bugs that make it unusable. So it's Linux story is weak. A very bad start for a KDE app...but at least maybe on Windows it works well. Well the problem then is it does the classic blender thing of having non standard shortcuts and usage modes, except unlike blender it does so for literally no reason. Buttons in most of these programs, for certain classes of operations are standardized, and Krita just works differently for the fun of it. No justifications, just "spend a long time changing it if you want it different." The icons are also incredibly ugly and people get defensive about them. The QT thememing is fine, but the actual icons for brushes and the like look amateurish at best and really brings down the cohesiveness of the program. Certain tools are also abysmal to use. The text tool is a joke. Then you have certain operations being incredibly slow. I have worked as a professional artist for years. People here really seem to be implying photoshop is the "big dog" in the space, but this simply isn't true. I see far more CSP users than Photoshop users and among my coworkers and haven't used photoshop for anything but some post processing for years. Krita then needs to compete with CSP, and Procreate (which has gotten huge recently.) To be frank, it doesn't. CSP works mediocorely with Wine but because the input problems don't exist that exist with Krita I have taken to using that on Linux ironically because I use KDE. Krita is basically a non option for me at this point and has me considering making a GPU accelerated open source drawing app instead of suffering this current atrocious landscape.

danShumway 3y ago
I don't have a huge amount of experience with Krita's Wayland performance because the situation on Wayland is still sub-optimal for art in general. Tablet support has gotten much better, but configuration per-app or tied to the desktop environment still seems to be a big issue. The idea that my tablet configuration might stop working if I switch off of a desktop environment is kind of a non-starter to me. It stinks because I really want to use Wayland, but even as recently as a month ago I tried to see if I could make the switch and couldn't. Truthfully, if someone has a lot of money to dump around, devoting a few full-time developers or dropping cash on https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver would probably go a long way towards encouraging Wayland adoption from artists. As far as I can tell the issue is not that Wayland can't do tablet control on the same level as X11, it's that the tools built around those capabilities still seem immature. OpenTabletDriver looks very promising but seems to have limited device support, limited in no small part by what tablets the devs have access to (my Cintiq 32 is unlikely to get added any time soon because it is no longer being sold and was expensive and uncommon when it was on the market -- which probably means I should try to do it, but it's been tough to find the time). The NVIDIA situation is also a problem, but there's nothing anyone can do about that other than yell at NVIDIA more. ---- > The text tool is a joke. The text tool should see considerable improvement soon; the entire text engine got rewritten in the last release, the devs just only had time to get it to feature parity with the existing tools.

pavon 3y ago

At my workplace a common theme is that folks that use a piece of software heavily as part of their job use the big professional tools both because it is worth paying more for a better tool considering how much value they get out of it, and because it aids in collaborating for everyone to use the same tools. People who only use a tool occasionally are the ones using Paint.net, Krita, Inkspace, Audacity, etc. Part of that is to save money, but a much bigger part is that it's too much hassle to go through procurement when it isn't absolutely necessary. More hours would be spent paying for the tool then would be spent using it. That makes it a hard sell to get corporate donations. From the corporate perspective, the tool is completely off their radar because their employees are using it to intentionally bypass corporate bureaucracy.

Liquix 3y ago
Absolutely. But sometimes the best in class tool is open source (see: ffmpeg), resulting in a win-win-win for the accounting department, for the developer freed from bureaucracy, and for open source as a whole. It would be nice to live in a world where this was the case more often.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> From the corporate perspective, the tool is completely off their radar because their employees are using it to intentionally bypass corporate bureaucracy. If something is priced cheaply enough to be paid for out of pocket by an "individual contributor," but for a work purpose, that's a big deal. The bigger takeaway is that all seemingly B2B software is still B2C in disguise. On the other hand, the kind, smart people making Krita aren't in it to run a sales pipeline. Like even if the diehard, nonparticipating libertarian rationalists are right, if it's true that every person on Earth would happily be a billionaire, most people think sales isn't fun or meaningful. If you want to make the world more meaningful in your own way, I appreciate that the limit of fundraising to that goal is donations.

max_ 3y ago

Is Krita used in the corporate world? What companies or niche industries use it heavily? I thought it was more of a tool for hobbyists?

grumpymouse 3y ago

It always feels like open source enthusiasts would never pay for something themselves, but expect that their boss will for some reason. What would your boss get by paying that he/she isn't already getting for free?

Bilal_io 3y ago
Because we expect the person making money from the tool to help pay for it. This applies to individuals as well if the tool is making them money
distances 3y ago
It would help if the projects had some option to purchase a license or subscription, even if the application is open source. Lots of employees have a company credit card and the authorization to use it for small productivity purchases. But it would have to be a business expense that is easy to file, not a donation.