Are we all FOSS, mostly FOSS, or something else?

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21

Good question… I have a feeling the balance would shift significantly if there were more video discussion here due to the difficulty of competing with the likes of DaVinci Resolve.

As a side note, does anyone know of any FOSS video NLEs that are not based on MLT (which gets rid of shotcut and kdenlive) due to MLT still having an 8-bit pipeline? I took a crack at attempting to identify/fix kdenlive’s misbehavior when presented with full-luma-range video (see Luma Scale Considerations and the "Full Luma Range" option. • KDE Community Forums ) a while ago and gave up.

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This is a good conversation to have and I certainly appreciate everyone’s viewpoints and input. I tend to agree with @David_Tschumperle and some others but I can see the concern about being flooded with edits and work done entirely in proprietary software (or mostly).

In general this should be a place that can serve to showcase and hopefully gently nudge people into using Free Software. At some point you start to look silly if your expensive proprietary software is barely doing a better job than a truly Free option… :wink:

This is also something we should consider on a case-by-case basis. Serial offenders may be asked to stop or pushed back even harder on why they don’t use a Free solution instead. (Indeed in some places we are lacking in tools to support some things - but that gap is closing.)

If it gets too bad we can certainly consider something stronger but I for one welcome proprietary users as it gives us a chance to maybe guide them to something that doesn’t restrict their freedoms…

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I completely agree with @David_Tschumperle and @patdavid. I was about to write something but knew that others would be better with their words.

To add, gate keeping is rarely beneficial to communities.

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People coming in and showing (off) how “good” their edit made with proprietary software is.

(Indeed in some places we are lacking in tools to support some things - but that gap is closing.)

Someone may ask (or brag), “Commercial software can do XYZ, is there some FOSS that an also do that?”

In my view, that is a good question. The answer may be, “Yes, FOSS product ABC can do that.” Or it might be, “No, no FOSS can do that, but this will spur someone into action.”

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For the purpose of comparrison or where there is no FOSS alternative for the particular application or a feature, I think the use of proprietary software is well justified.

In the end we should be here for people that want to introduce any creative FOSS software in their pipeline which might also contain proprietary software. We should strive to get hobbyists and professionals willing to dip their tow in FOSS, start swimming with at least one FOSS software in their pipeline but we should not drown them.

I’m also of the opinion that we should discuss proprietary software here and how it relates to foss, what can we learn etc.

Often times I find foss developers that are not even familliar with the equivalent proprietary software to that that they are developing that is actually leading the industry. This would be a good place for everybody to be informed.

So imo, discussing proprieatary software is completely fine, but only with the strong relation to the foss. I think nobody would want for people to start creating numerous threads dedicated to proprietary software only, that’s what the proprietary vendors software forums are for.

I’d like seing more, editing “battles”. Someone might sumit a Lightroom / C1 or even Photoshop edit with a raw file. Now let’s try that in FOSS. It might give us a better picture where FOSS shines and where it doesn’t compared to it’s proprietary counterparts. If nothing, it would be lots of fun :slight_smile:

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What I’m on the fence with is weather this forum should allow support questions about proprietary software but on Linux platform.
So let’s say Unreal, Lightworks, DaVinci Resolve, Fusion, Nuke, Houdini, BorisFX, Maya, Unity 3D etc.

If someone was asking for these on Windows I personaly wouldn’t find it apropreate but if it was on Linux I’d do everything in my power to keep that person on Linux since it’s inevitable that that person will discover other FOSS software.

Since communities of each of those proprietary apps are much larger than entire foss art community, it would be good to grow Linux in those large communities and in theory making Linux more apealing to them and getting more people to put their foot trough the door into FOSS that way. It’s a good way for them to still keep their security (with their proprietary app) but start experimenting with FOSS. And they will have to because a lot of other proprietary software is just not available.

Edit:
Imo we should encourage at least Apple users to go to Linux because imo we won’t be getting them into FOSS software otherwise.

I’ve borrowed a MacBook Pro today to and I had a chance to test all that FOSS apps that I normally use on Linux. I have to say that the state is pretty much terrible. I think this screenshot sums it up pretty well:

Screenshot 2021-03-17 at 05.52.45
Screenshot 2021-03-17 at 05.52.452880×1800 372 KB

And I actually don’t care at all about MacOS but if we are to attract every user to FOSS, for MacOS users that means moving them to Linux. In doing so we should allow discussing proprietary software on Linux as well. Just my 2c.

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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 :slight_smile:

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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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33

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 :wink:

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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:

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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, …

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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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@heckflosse

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. :slight_smile:

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Hmm. :thinking: The question is what you want (need) to do.
I can help there, I work with both applications.

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