I’d hard pass on that. If a company sells and product, then they can pay support people to help.
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Fair enough 
Please note that there is a distinction between freeware (‘free’ as not costing money) and free software. I know you meant no harm.
(What is Free Software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation) Roughly, it [free software] means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price.
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Yeah, I’m all for accepting everybody. I can see scenarios where it makes sense to talk about a Lightroom edit and compare it to other edits. I think the discussion if such contributions should be shut down can be had when things get out of hand.
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I fully agree. I’m eager to learn what proprietary photo software can do better than FLOSS.
(I bought a X-Rite product a year ago and they gave me a one-year subscription to Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC for free. Of course I had a look but my conclusion was: I don’t need them because my FLOSS tools are at least on par…).
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I am also not in favor of a dictatorial approach, and of course we should not discriminate against anyone who uses proprietary software in their work.
The reasons for this have already been mentioned here.
But, one should not forget also important aspect, what distinguishes FOSS from other software. This is not just about a “club” where people who like specific software get together to talk about it and look for ways to do their work effectively, but it is also about accessibility, security and learning opportunities, aspects that are not reduced to usage alone.
When I, for example, present my processing in Play Raw, anyone who wants to follow steps can download, install, and try out the same software without hesitation. No one is excluded because - for whatever reason - he is not able to afford software or has other concerns about usability. In this way, they can not only participate, but also have better access to learning.
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I have strong feelings about this. I think we, as the FOSS community as a whole, should try to be as inclusive as possible. Respecting the freedom of users is a mindset, not a license.
I sell commercial software, with full access to the source. Not Free Software, mind you, but Open Source. This empowers users to tinker and to understand.
I teach students to use Python, in a hitherto very Matlab-focused world (academic audio signal processing). After a short while, the students come to appreciate Python by its own merits, not because of its license.
We should encourage people to use the software we love, because we believe that our software is better suited to understand image processing, which will ultimately lead them to become better artists. But crucially, the goal here is to educate, and art, not stallmannian celibatism.
Furthermore, excluding commercial products from discussion has a high risk of making us blind to developments in the commercial world. There are dozens of companies doing great work in the commercial sphere, with hundreds of programmers immersed in image processing and photo editing. There is much to be learned from these products and people, be they freedom fighters or salesmen. We should strive to learn from them, and gain a broader perspective by including their developments into our world-view instead of ignoring their work in the name of our dogma.
As for my own work, I started out with FOSS image editing software, but have since moved parts of my workflows into commercial products. I will no doubt “come back” in due time, as I have in other areas many times. I am a maintainer of a number of FOSS software, and strongly believe that a FOSS mentality leads to better software eventually. Yet I currently use Windows, and work for a commercial company. It would be a shame if I was to be denied this wonderful community because of that.
And lastly, I don’t know about you, but all my cameras run decidedly un-open firmwares.
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You don’t have to throw out anything. I use Affinity too, but feel like it’s not really appropriate to post them here.
But I think it’s appropriate to post i.e. an Affinity video showing a method that can be applied with other software.
They still have that 50% discount going and for $27 or so one time price it’s a good deal. Small companies need support too 
Absolutely.
This is an advertisement, which we should avoid in my opinion
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Why? We have no problem discussing hardware. I’d be the first one to share with you the info about a good deal if I find it. For example GoPro Hero 9 is now 50$ off.
But I kinda agree with you. Maybe there should be one dedicated thread for that alone or if someone wants to share an info about a deal maybe a better suited place is the Matrix channel instead of opening a dedicated thread here which would be really inapropriate.
edit: Here, a dedicated thread. I was a bit proactive and opened it without any discussion but it can be closed if it’s not ok or if it goes in the wrong dirrection:
I’d say because is an advertisement and not related with FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).
When we discuss about hardware is, usually, about recommendations to know how it works in our systems(you know, drivers support), performance in our FOSS stack, …
I’m thinking the same thing about proprietary software.
For example I’d like to buy Affinity Publisher and use it on Linux since there just isn’t any alternative for Linux. For me to able to achieve that I need to do a VM with IOMMU or something. I don’t know how to do that tho. So there’s one lengthy discussion to be had about many foss things stemming from that proprietary app.
So why shouldn’t we talk about IOMMU and VMs in relation to proprietary software? We’d help a lot of struggling people. I don’t want to be told that I should just use Inkscape which doesn’t even have cmyk support or Scribus that is really not ready yet for “real” usage.
I’d like for us to be able to explore how to transition someone from a fully proprietary pipeline towards a mostly of fully foss one. And for the Mac users, which I blindly assume are more of the artistic kind, a switch to Linux would be required as none of the software works 99% correctly and Apple makes it even harder and harder every year to do that.
Last night I’ve used a MacBook Pro and I totally see why noone cares about FOSS there. It’s such a terrible experience that I think foss should just drop Mac support and ask users to move to Linux.
So we should be talking about virtual machines, maybe looking glass and how to run proprietary software reliably on Linux platform. That would make a the transition a breeze.
Now this is just my opinion. I might be well in the wrong.
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To tell you the truth, because I wrote the original post in that thread and I have a personal hate towards subscription based artistic software. So untill pixls determines an official position on that in this thread, I’ve just made that one of the rules. I think it’s a good one. If it isn’t I can change it later. 
Hmm. 
The question is what you want (need) to do.
I can help there, I work with both applications.
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It well could be, I’m not sure myself either. But I created it so let’s see where it goes I guess. It can always be removed. Maybe it can be just hardware and we make a strong position fro only foss software and that’s it.
My problem is not with software vs hardware – it’s about advertising here on pixls. If you are looking for deals, there are plenty of places on the internet already where you can find all the info you want…
EDIT: and btw, I see no problem discussing any kind of software and/or hardware, as long as it is not ads.
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Thank you, it’s not about that particualr issue. There are many instances of software just missing on Linux or in FOSS. We are forced to buy it sometimes since there isn’t an alternative. In that case we should figure something out. How to use it while still on Linux and using other FOSS.
I see your point but that discussion, IMHO, fits better in your_favourite_distro users group or similar places.
It doesn’t mean that if you ask something like that, and I can help you, I’ll try to help you (of course).
But I think is a little bit out of the scope of this forum.
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There is plenty of talk of this elsewhere. It isn’t just a matter of being allowed to ask a question, but the question of “can we provide the answers?”
Spicey hot take there 
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It’s hard to disagree with that. I created a poll.