5 ms·

My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun is just much larger than the people willing

by WD-42 1y ago

My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun is just much larger than the people willing to make icons for software projects on their own time because they think it's fun.

ambicapter 1y ago
Much larger but not non-existent, people post their work (including laborious stuff like icon suites and themes) on art forums and websites for no gain all the time.
- keyringlight 1y ago
  Going back to the winxp days there was a fairly vibrant group of people making unofficial themes for it, although I think that was helped by the existence of tools (from Stardock?) specialized on that task and making it approachable if your skill set didn't align perfectly.
zer00eyz 1y ago
UI != icons. UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app... This is how we get UI's that work but suck to use. This is how we allow dark patterns to flourish. You can and will happily do things your users/customers hate if it makes a dent in the bottom of the eye and you dont have to face their criticisms directly.
- lamontcg 1y ago
  > UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app... Which is also why UI/UX on open source projects are generally going to suck. There's certainly no money to pay for that kind of experiment. And if you include telemetry, people lose their goddamn minds, assuming the open source author isn't morally against it to begin with. The result is you're just getting the author's intuitive guesswork about UI/UX design, by someone who is likely more of a coder than a design person.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    Unless you get super invasive, telemetry will tell you how often a feature is used but I don't think it'll help much with bad and confusing layouts.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    The dependency on telemetry instead of actually sitting down with a user and watching them use your software is part of the problem. No amount of screen captures, heatmaps or abandoned workflow metrics will show you the expression on a person's face.
  - imtringued 1y ago
    You actually skipped over the most important part: > You can and will happily do things your users/customers hate if ... you dont have to face their criticisms directly. A lot of software developers can't take criticism well when it comes to their pet projects. The entire FreeCAD community, for instance, is based entirely around the idea that FreeCAD is fine and the people criticising it are wrong and have an axe to grind, when that is exactly backwards.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Graphic designers and artists get ripped off, all the time; frequently, by nerds, who tend to do so, in a manner that insults the value of the artist's work. It's difficult to get those kinds of creatives to donate their time (trust me on this, I'm always trying). I'm an ex-artist, and I'm a nerd. I can definitively say that creating good designs, is at least as difficult as creating good software, but seldom makes the kind of margin that you can, from software, so misappropriation hurts artists a lot more than programmers.
- some_furry 1y ago
  This is a weird thread for me to read, as someone who a) works primarily with developer tooling (and not even GUI tooling, I write cryptography stuff usually!), b) is very active in a vibrant community of artists that care about nerd software projects. I don't, as a rule, ever ask artists to contribute for free, but I still occasionally get gifted art from kind folks. (I'm more than happy to commission them for one-off work.) Artists tragically undercharge for their labor, so I don't think the goal should be "coax them into contributing for $0" so much as "coax them into becoming an available and reliable talent pool for your community at an agreeable rate". If they're enthusiastic enough, some might do free work from time to time, but that shouldn't be the expectation.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    It’s a long story, in my case. There’s a very good reason for me to be asking for gratis work. I regularly do tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of work for free.
    - imtringued 1y ago
      That only works if you form a team with the artist. It doesn't work when the person you're commissioning free stuff from is an external artist who is getting flooded by both paid and unpaid requests. Even a token amount will let them know to prioritize you over the freeloaders.
oddmiral 1y ago
Earlier free software has/had tons of free artwork: icons, themes, skins, mods. I had few dozens window border skins and GUI themes for Gnome 1.x, for example. gnome-look.org has 1.5k themes for GTk3/4, but I'm OK with stock theme now, because 90% of the time I see browser or console.

by WD-42 1y ago

ambicapter 1y ago

Much larger but not non-existent, people post their work (including laborious stuff like icon suites and themes) on art forums and websites for no gain all the time.

keyringlight 1y ago
Going back to the winxp days there was a fairly vibrant group of people making unofficial themes for it, although I think that was helped by the existence of tools (from Stardock?) specialized on that task and making it approachable if your skill set didn't align perfectly.

zer00eyz 1y ago

UI != icons. UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app... This is how we get UI's that work but suck to use. This is how we allow dark patterns to flourish. You can and will happily do things your users/customers hate if it makes a dent in the bottom of the eye and you dont have to face their criticisms directly.

lamontcg 1y ago
> UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app... Which is also why UI/UX on open source projects are generally going to suck. There's certainly no money to pay for that kind of experiment. And if you include telemetry, people lose their goddamn minds, assuming the open source author isn't morally against it to begin with. The result is you're just getting the author's intuitive guesswork about UI/UX design, by someone who is likely more of a coder than a design person.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  Unless you get super invasive, telemetry will tell you how often a feature is used but I don't think it'll help much with bad and confusing layouts.
- cwillu 1y ago
  The dependency on telemetry instead of actually sitting down with a user and watching them use your software is part of the problem. No amount of screen captures, heatmaps or abandoned workflow metrics will show you the expression on a person's face.
- imtringued 1y ago
  You actually skipped over the most important part: > You can and will happily do things your users/customers hate if ... you dont have to face their criticisms directly. A lot of software developers can't take criticism well when it comes to their pet projects. The entire FreeCAD community, for instance, is based entirely around the idea that FreeCAD is fine and the people criticising it are wrong and have an axe to grind, when that is exactly backwards.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Graphic designers and artists get ripped off, all the time; frequently, by nerds, who tend to do so, in a manner that insults the value of the artist's work. It's difficult to get those kinds of creatives to donate their time (trust me on this, I'm always trying). I'm an ex-artist, and I'm a nerd. I can definitively say that creating good designs, is at least as difficult as creating good software, but seldom makes the kind of margin that you can, from software, so misappropriation hurts artists a lot more than programmers.

some_furry 1y ago
This is a weird thread for me to read, as someone who a) works primarily with developer tooling (and not even GUI tooling, I write cryptography stuff usually!), b) is very active in a vibrant community of artists that care about nerd software projects. I don't, as a rule, ever ask artists to contribute for free, but I still occasionally get gifted art from kind folks. (I'm more than happy to commission them for one-off work.) Artists tragically undercharge for their labor, so I don't think the goal should be "coax them into contributing for $0" so much as "coax them into becoming an available and reliable talent pool for your community at an agreeable rate". If they're enthusiastic enough, some might do free work from time to time, but that shouldn't be the expectation.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  It’s a long story, in my case. There’s a very good reason for me to be asking for gratis work. I regularly do tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of work for free.
  - imtringued 1y ago
    That only works if you form a team with the artist. It doesn't work when the person you're commissioning free stuff from is an external artist who is getting flooded by both paid and unpaid requests. Even a token amount will let them know to prioritize you over the freeloaders.

oddmiral 1y ago

Earlier free software has/had tons of free artwork: icons, themes, skins, mods. I had few dozens window border skins and GUI themes for Gnome 1.x, for example. gnome-look.org has 1.5k themes for GTk3/4, but I'm OK with stock theme now, because 90% of the time I see browser or console.