A photo processing software should attract a distribution of users that matches the distribution of real-life photographers. [and darktable’s users are too technical]
indeed, that is a very narrow statement. Of course, the assessment also hugely depends on what your (design) goals are.
I would argue though, that the more detailed explanations below that statement are worth looking at, even if you do not agree with the reasoning.
I very much like the technical aspects of dt a lot, but being a non-photographically trained hobbyist, I get for example this
Professional and trained photographers are very valuable to any imaging software because they are not only more demanding, but also more likely able to express the kind of image they are looking for.
-often I have a clear idea of what I want, sometimes I do not - and I might not (yet) be able to clearly and precisely report an issue, or even propose a better alternative, which he goes on about in the following paragraphs. But I (personally and figuratively speaking) would like to contribute to improving dt.
So, while I agree that dt does not at all have to cater to everyone (please not), I also agree with the conclusion that a broader user base could help improve dt in many ways - in a sense of “refining whats already good”, rather than “make it less technical, so everyone is happy”.
That would indeed be very bad
It’s a pity that the bias and opinions of the person conducting the survey stand out so much within the writeup of the survey and its conclusions. I guess that’s somewhat unavoidable but it would have been nice if it was presented in a more objective fashion.
A photo processing software should attract a distribution of users that matches the distribution of real-life photographers. [and darktable’s users are too technical]
I would say that the product should attract the distribution of the intended user base, whatever that might be. If the survey results are missing the targeted audience then hopefully the answers provide some guidance on how to close the gap
Well since the author of the survey is one of the most important developers of the program he basically criticizes himself. He was not able to push dt to a place where it would appeal to more users, especially so called professional users.
There is a significant sampling bias in these type of surveys.
Any raw photo developing software needs to address who is the intended audience. Does it want to target a high quantity of images to process (eg. wedding photographer)? This means more automated tools that just click a button and with magic you get a decent image. Most of these photographers wont care too much about perfect color preservation. O think they will be interested in more DAM features or more ways to create photobooks or artistic filters for social media post. OR should the software target more of the folks that care about getting the best image possible?
I dont think we should target to be another me too software like Lightroom or Capture One or whatever. I dont think the goal of just gaining more users just to be popular is one that is important to me.
and not to forget: the progress of darktable is driven by tech-savvy people. So it is important to be attractive to these user groups - maybe there is one among them with the skills to contribute the next impressive feature …
For many FOSS contributors, the intended user base is a population of one, namely the individual developer him or herself.
As a secondary objective, they would like more contributors to be attracted to the project (to contribute ideas based on their particular expertise and help maintain, expand, test and document it), again, all for the benefit of User One. Now, getting more users may increase the number of contributors, but this is not necessarily the case. Yes, some Windows users, for example, who move to dt from LR can contribute valuable insights (or might have programming skills) that an existing dt developer/user could benefit from. But many need a lot of handholding first and then suggest (or maybe even implement) changes that upset the existing “logic” in the program and therefore don’t necessarily count as progress. There is no benefit for most dt developers to attract more of such users, except from a purely philanthropic perspective. That last motive could inspire a wish for a more diverse user base (women/races/nationalities/abilities) although many will also justify that wish from a desire for more viewpoints to avoid the blind spots that a too homogenous group will develop.
A third objective to expand the user base could be to become more influential and for example get third parties to release information required to further improve the project or otherwise to gain more access to external systems.
Lastly, some people see the “product” as a means to an end. They want to grow a large user base, of whatever composition, because they see it as a target to sell services to. For them the inherent quality of what is developed is of secondary concern. Only its ability to attract new users (the ones most likely to be in need of support) is important. In some ways the less sophisticated the better, since technical people are less easily marketed to. Whether those new users eventually stick with it, or even contribute and possibly compete, is besides the point.
agree very much with your summary here. i think most people, especially from outside the open source context have this capitalist reflex that more growth is always better and needed, without even thinking about the reason why they think this.
Not to get too far afield, but it’s the investor-driven mentality. While it certainly has legitimate benefits, it can also foster a range of bad outcomes from which the individuals (who collectively “approved” them) can distance themselves since they’re not the ones directly making the decisions. The stakeholders can blame the execs, the execs can blame the market (expectations / goals) and so forth… When there’s enough indirection, no one feels any blame nor sense of responsibility. The automatic, default justification of growth at all costs covers a multitude of sins.
I’m certainly not anti-capitalist nor anti-business, I’m just not 100% trusting of corporate business practices. And although the market is a big place, this approach does not have an infinite life expectancy. It will fail at some point.
But that’s a whole 'nuther topic, which is off-topic here.
One point I thought was that people who are happily using something like darktable, and don’t have any issues (good!) might be unlikely to be active on any of the forums and so on where the survey was posted. Which would bias results towards the more ‘technical’ users… not sure whether this could be a large bias or not…
Indeed it would be interesting where the survey people came from. The technical bias might well be in part caused by selecting mostly from forum users.
In theory it still is, even if you are just looking for more volunteers to build more features. The question is can you manage such an influx. And for that, I’d argue that you want a selection of people with similar preferences, so definitely not a cross section of the whole potential “market”. But if you only want customers, not contributors, because you’re going to run the “project” as a one man band, then obviously the calculation is quite different. You’d throw as wide a net as possible. And you’d try to discourage people from trying the alternatives, especially the almost identical ones, by talking trash about them.
darktable springing from the Linux world is self selecting for technical people.
I think the author also underestimates just how entrenched Adobe is in this market. Other corporate competitors with paid developers, probably some software design process he agrees with more and advertising budget barely make a dent in Adobe’s market share. You can have the best, most well designed software package in the world for a task but it’s still going to take a lot of energy to overcome that inertia. $12 a month is literally nothing if you’re a business. I paid more than that in local license fees, heck a phone line is more than that a month. No one who’s used to CC and hustling to pay rent is going to switch and sink the time investment to learn something else easily.
Combined with the inbuilt support and terabytes of knowledge built around those products and it’s basically a non-starter to even consider anything else for most professionals. Adobe has enough money and market share to starve competition to death.
I think it’s far less “darktable is made by and for gross nerds” and more the cost/benefit analysis for professional artists is pretty one sided. darktable wouldn’t just have to be trading blows with LR/ACR to gain traction but be head and shoulders above and blowing it out of the water on all fronts to cause a measurable move. As it stands now the risk of spending too long on an edit, not being able to get decent results due to not knowing how something works, missing out on keeping up on Adobe training/learning and so on are all negatives not in darktable’s favor.
That being said being commercial doesn’t necessarily make an artist somehow more legitimate and I think there are plenty of people (maybe even trained artists) who have a more boring day job and want a better/more flexible tool. It’s OK to just have that market IMO.
@betazoid I agree in that it reads a bit like a self-own.
@hanatos the growth question is something I’ve struggled with myself as well. I think it’s natural to want to tell everyone about something we’re excited about and share the joy as it were irrespective of the economic underpinnings. Although I think it is easy to get caught up in the competitive/capitalist mindset. Maybe it’s an odd form of tribalism, who knows. I don’t think darktable has to grow but I like sharing work I’ve created with it and showing how I get results out of it. I think it’d be nice if people didn’t felt so pinned in by the corporate techno-feudalist future we seem to be headed for and had other options. I guess in that way I hope they take a look at darktable, vkdt or RawTherapee and so on.
This is true. Printing houses, design agencies are Adobe loyal - they just want something that work and don’t care for the money - they just pass it to the consumer.
But it is noticeable for the consumer because Adobe is not the only one eyeing at the consumer’s pocket.
Some people abandon their hobby because of that.
This is quite true. But there are users who use both. I did try few times to develop a picture in CC but I can’t say it was outstanding experience. I mean most of the time I am quite happy with DT. When you add the price diference $12 vs. zero (or something if you can afford it) is a big deal.
Believe it or not but few years ago I bought a new laptop. The money invested towards it could have easily bought a nice windows laptop or a mac but I chose Linux instead. And the ability to run DT was a primary force in considering the hardware.
Can we? Discussions become unwieldy, unstructured and unproductive, hardly ever finishing with concensus, leading to either silent or rage quitting and forcing Pascal to take all the unpopular decisions.
My personal idea of what open source software is, is that it is mainly it’s community. The software is nothing without it’s community, contributors and users alike.
So building a healthy, constructive, helpful, and welcoming community is the main goal. And one part of maintaining a sustainable community is new members. Why? Well people die, find other hobbies, leave for other priorities and so forth. So any long term healthy community needs an influx of new users to compensate for its natural loss of members. And remember that only a fraction of people trying the software become users and only a fraction of users report bugs and only a fraction of bug reports become developers and only a fraction of developers become long term committed developers…
(I’m essentially copy pasting this mind set from other community driven areas of my life. Mainly being an active Lindy Hop dancer/instructor and always pushing for the extreme importance of prioritizing beginners. A dance community quickly fades away into emptiness without new dancers).
Keywords: healthy, constructive, helpful, and welcoming.
