Blender Conference and other open source musing (Krita, Gimp, Inkscape etc)

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Hello everyone,

These days the Blender conference is taking place in Amsterdam and there are plenty of interesting topics [1].

Among the many articles - blogs I have read on this subject there is one which really got my attention.
It is written by the project leader (Boudewijn Rempt), of Krita [2], an open source painting application:
https://valdyas.org/fading/hacking/krita-hacking/back-from-the-blender-conference-2019/

Since this article touches also many other open source softwares (Gimp, Inkscape etc) I hope it may be a good read for other users in this forum :slight_smile:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderFoundation/videos
[2] Krita | Digital Painting. Creative Freedom.

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I came in this forum to post the same link!

Also, Boudewijn Rempt posted a follow-up article called
Looking in or looking out?

These two articles are, indeed, a very interesting read.

A lot of free software is made by developers, for developers. However, another lot of free software is made for end users; applications like Krita, Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, Darktable, Libre Office, Audacity, KDEnlive… and many, many more.

The arguments made by Mr. Rempt about funding the projects are very interesting. I know this is a point of friction for some other free software, and I hope this article will help addressing some of the issues developers of such software have with this idea.

I felt a bit sad reading

What struck me once again was the disparity between how Blender is looked at from inside the Linux Desktop community, as if it were a largely irrelevant niche hobby project of no big moment in the larger scheme of things, and the reality of Blender as one of the most successful end-user oriented free software projects.

I am a big “Linux Desktop” proponent, but I don’t recognize myself in Mr. Rempt’s description. I’ve been following Blender’s ascension for many years now and I’m super excited to see where it’s headed. But, to be honest, I don’t go to Free Software conferences, so maybe I haven’t met the crowds that Mr. Rempt is referring to.

This was also a bit sad to read:

Ton has once told me he doesn’t feel connected in any way to the regular free software/open source crowd. Being Free Software is essential for Blender’s success. The GPL is core. But being part of the GNU/GNOME/KDE etc. world, he warned me, would be a drag on Krita becoming successful.

But I understand the message: Ton is more interested in spending time with actual artists (i.e. the actual user base) to improve the software than he is arguing about what kind of packaging method to use for deploying Blender on Debian-based systems… and that totally makes sense!

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Hello @Pierre,

Thanks a lot for the link about the second article of the Krita project leader. It is useful to explain much better his points.

The arguments made by Mr. Rempt about funding the projects are very interesting. I know this is a point of friction for some other free software.

Yep. I do agree!

Money and open source software are REALLY a controversial topic to address and everyone has his ows ideas on this matter.

For instance, If you read the 2 articles of Mr Rempt it looks like one of the reasons of the success of Krita, in terms of revenue and number of users (and hence downloads), is its availability on the Windows platform (since most end-users work on Windows, like it or not).
In the past, I have sponsored a bit myself Krita precisely for this reason. Because it was an open source software which worked on all major systems: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Having said that, among some Open source enthusiasts you still sometimes read the proposal that you do not have to release an open source software on Windows because, by doing so, it is more difficult to force the end users to try Linux and leave Windows for good.
Of course, this reasoning makes sense from their point of view! However, it is somewhat the contrary of what an open source project leader might hope for. That is, spreading his open source software everywhere, for everyone’s joy and pleasure, not only on Linux, in short.

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You have to separate the ethical issues from the technical ones here.

A lot of free software developers are using Linux. Most of the time, the projects they work on is there to solve a problem they, themselves, have. Therefore, it’s normal that they only focus on releasing a Linux version. Maybe there are additional ethical considerations, but I really think the main reason is a lack of interest.

Take Darktable for instance: it is a software for photographers. Most photographers have probably never heard of Linux, or at least never tried it. They are using Windows or Mac OS. However, Darktable developers are all Linux users. Therefore, the software remained Linux-only for quite a while, and the Windows version support came very late. I don’t think it was intentional from the developers, though: their message was more “we don’t use Windows, but if a Windows developer wants to join and help releasing the software for Windows, he’s more than welcome to do it!”.

Of course it’s better if your software is available on a wide spectrum of operating systems, but this is really hard to maintain if you’re a small team (and especially if the members of this team are all using the same operating system :))