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Thoughts on Free And Open Source Software
What do y'all think of FOSS software. How do y'all think more people will care about FOSS software and make the switch?
Is it lack of information?
Lack of caring?
Lack of convenience?
I honestly think that most people want as little to do with computers as possible. For these people, it's bad enough they have to use the damned things. They don't want to also have to deal with maintaining the damned things, upgrading the damned things, or selecting what sort of software the damned things run.
The case for FOSS is that it sucks less than proprietary software because it allows you more control over your computing experience. The problem is that "sucks less" is only a compelling argument if you're a techie.
Exactly. As long as the common user still needs to open a terminal or RTFM to get stuff to work adoption will be a very long way off I think. Even as a techie, the customisation and stuff is fun up until the point where I need to find a driver for a device that's not functioning when I just want to get on with being productive.
John Gruber still said it better than anyone else, fourteen years ago:
FOSS is at its best when it's by developers, for developers. But for everyday end users, it will never meaningfully compete with proprietary software.
I think there's always something of a tension between having more control vs. having something that works out of the box. In some ways it mirrors the "PC vs. Console" debate. Yes, one gives you more control and you can save money, but a lot of people are willing to pay extra for something that will "just work" without them having to fiddle with it. And I don't think that's necessarily just a matter of not wanting anything to do with computers, either.
You ever try Krita? Hands down better than Photoshop or Illustrator if you're drawing stuff from scratch with a tablet. I mostly use it for note taking actually but even there it totally kicks butt. Even been getting some photo manipulation tools in there recently, really cool stuff to see.
And Blender, and I can't say I've ever used Maya so I'm trusting you here, might not be as good as Maya but it's also got a finger in many more things than Maya. If I'm understanding right, Maya's just a 3D modelling/rendering program? And maybe it's fantastic at that. But Blender has an entire creative suite packed in there practically, and its workflow is consistent across the whole thing. The 2.8 update has me really hyped.
I agree. FOSS is an amazing example of what a random group of people can make when a community gets together and attempt to make something great. This works well when the program benefits from being Open Source and having lots of contributors (Ie: FireFox with their addons) GIMP falls behind Photoshop and Affinity Photo because they do not have a full time team that has industry experience, benefits (pay), and has a single point of leadership.
To OP's question: Is it lack of information?: No. I'm well aware of Open Source alternatives to Premier, AE, and Photoshop. They just are not as good.
Lack of caring?: I would prefer to not rely on closed source programs that make you pay monthly as a service(Adobe). Once again, just not as good.
Lack of convenience?: Maybe? My girlfriend uses Excel an extensive amount. I could get her onto LibreOffice instead but if she needs help on something at work the person she'll be asking if 99% of the time going to be using Excel. Why would she bother learning how to do something in Excel then trying to find out if Libre has the same features?
GIMP offers just most of the features Photoshop has. It even has a resynthesis plugin that predates PS's 'context aware' tools. Most PS exclusive features are either protected by patent or are arguably not worth implementing the same way in the GIMP (such as 3D tools).
I would say that Photoshop has the advantage of being easier to use that the GIMP, but in reality it is only slightly better. The biggest advantage PS has is that it is the de facto standard photo editor, and that is only ever going to change if Adobe ever makes an astronomically bad mistake in their support of it. Something worse than Adobe CC.
The thing that annoys me with open source apps like these - reaper is a classic example for me - they take a perfectly good industry standard interface and try to "fix" it. Cubase and Logic have perfectly good usable understood interfaces, why did Reaper change it?
I find that to be an issue with a lot of open source software.
To answer your question, an "industry standard" does not necessarily mean that it is ideal. Photoshop, for instance, keeps a lot of it's tools hidden away, which makes it more difficult to learn.
But I have no idea why people keep bringing up reaper. It's proprietary software. It's not freeware either, so it really doesn't fit any definition of "free software".
I'm also confused by this. There are some excellent open source options out there like Audacity and Ardour! Let's discuss those!
Completely fair @ Photoshop & Illustrator (to a lesser extent Maya; but that's mainly just because I dislike the workflow of it personally. OSM is slowly getting better; but it's still got a ways to go. Libre/Open Office have better alternatives nowadays, but they are more difficult to find so it's whatever.)
Actually wait, no; Krita is nicer than Photoshop for render painting.
(Also, GIMP's last update made it into a Photoshop clone, which is...upsetting to me, personally.)
Mainly though, QEMU is so much better in every single way (including speed) than Virtualbox or VMware, and AQEMU is a great UI for it that beats out Virtualbox and VMware's UIs.
Personally, I appreciate that Libre/OpenOffice haven't changed for the better part of two decades. Once Microsoft started redesigning Office (which has always been buggy and unintuitive) to use ribbons and other touch-friendly design elements, I became a lot less interested in using the software.
By comparison, LibreOffice is extremely responsive and customizable, takes up far less memory, has better cross-platform compatibility, and doesn't rely on internet access. I can still keep my documents synced using Dropbox and a media server.
The way I use word processing/spreadsheet software has been exactly the same for my entire life, and I don't see it changing any time soon. Not sure why Microsoft always insists on reinventing the wheel.
I think this argument is just a little too broad, and that it would be more reasonable to say that if you're a professional creator who isn't a writer or a developer, it's really hard to make Linux work.
You can easily do all of that with only FOSS tools.
Have you heard about Scribus? It's a DTP package that offers fairly advanced tools including more advanced PDF authoring capabilities. I've used it a few times to create fillable, interactive PDF forms.
Hear me out here. I am not going to say you are wrong for choosing the software you did. That would be opening a Pandora's box of arguments. But you have told me why you chose what you are using when your original argument was that you can't use FOSS equivalents. The reality is that if you invested some time into them, you would be able to. Most of the software you would want to use is very stable and have a large number of users who have proven just how usable they are. Your dismissal comes across as insulting to those who have invested any time either working on or with these application.
Only if you are willing to compromise on UX and functionality for ideology (FOSS). For example, this is how Scribus looks. Compare that to this picture of Vellum. It's way, way better. It makes me feel like I can stop worrying about how the app works and just write.
Unfortunately, this is the case for the vast majority of FOSS apps: they are made by developers, for developers, with very little concern for UI or UX. The most prominent exception is apps made specifically for the Elementary OS AppCenter, but that's a very small collection so far.
I never made the claim that any FOSS project was more polished than any given commercial project. But since you bring it up, let's take a look at your claims.
This Scribus/Vellum comparison is unfair to compare with Vellum because Scribus is actually vastly more functional than Vellum. You can design any layout you can imagine with Scribus, while Vellum is limited to the format of a simple book. Scribus competes with professional DTP packages while Vellum competes with WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft Word. Actually, it's unfair to compare those two either, since Microsoft Word still has much more functionality. So purchasing Vellum not only requires you compromise on functionality, but in actual costs, since it's $250 for the full version.
You are making a lot of absolute statements about broad topics. Not all FOSS software has bad UXes. Is Firefox or Chromium bad? How about Krita? There are many cases where FOSS applications have better UX than commercial software. Desktop environments like Gnome and KDE have offered an experience that has been easier and more intuitive than Windows or MacOS for at least a decade, if not two.
Its useless to lump all FOSS software together like this. It's too broad of a category. There is no way I can say that all FOSS is better than all commercial software. The one thing I can say confidently is that if one does not at least give FOSS a chance, they are the only one hurt by that decision.
Depends on what functionality you are looking for. I just want to write words for a book. Vellum doesn't seem to compromise on that.
While that's fair - and I've edited my comment to reflect that - it's also not the point. The fact that outliers exist doesn't make the generalization invalid.
While I can't comment on Krita because I've never used it, Firefox and Chrome of course have great UX, having spent millions and millions of dollars on it. They have employees whose entire fulltime job is caring about the UX of these apps.
I have been using Linux on the desktop exclusively (i.e no Windows) for almost two decades, mostly with Gnome and Xfce. I still wouldn't call them easier than Mac or Windows, much less intuitive. The mere fact that multiple DEs exist is unintuitive for a new user.
Well, given my Linux history I've mentioned above, I'd like to think I have given (and will continue to give - no plans of switching) more than a real chance to it. I'm simply more pragmatic about where the FOSS desktop experience stands today versus the competition.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean you as in you personally with that last paragraph. I meant you generally, meaning any given person. I will edit that to better reflect my meaning.
Believe it or not, I actually think that we agree with each other. I never claimed that FOSS is better than proprietary software as a category. Heck, most FOSS is not even written for use directly by an end user, let alone the layman. The only thing I came here to talk about was to dispell the notion that books can't be written entirely with FOSS, which is demonstrably false.
You never told me that you had any history with Linux, unless you are an alt account for @koan.
No worries, maybe I've misread things. English isn't my native language.
I'd slightly rephrase that: I think there is more we agree on than we disagree :)
Agreed. You can write a book entirely with FOSS, as you can do most tasks. My only argument is that the FOSS offering tends to - in my experience - be weaker than commercial offerings in terms of UX.
This is literally my first day on ~, so I don't think I'm an alt for anyone :)
Yeah, we've got tons of Creative apps. Reason, DaVinci Resolve, Krita, Maya, Houdini, WPS Office, all kinds of crap I don't even know about, but what we don't have is the really big name stuff like Adobe Products and Microsoft Office. That stuff won't trickle in for a good long while, but Linux itself right now is getting to be a really solid consumer OS.
I don't know many, no! Although I do know the movie Next Gen (it's on Netflix) made by Tangent Animation was rendered entirely (and primarily but not exlusively created) inside Blender with the Cycles renderer.
Calling this next bit "professional" might stretch your definition a bit but the creator of Pepper And Carrot uses Krita exclusively, and each and every one of their (IMO) professional-quality comics is as open as the software used to create it.
I think that the "switch" en-mass wouldn't happen. We could carve out 10, maybe 20% of market to ourselves if we are lucky, but ultimately to get massive usage we would have to start selling PCs with Linux preinstalled. Most people don't build their own computers or even think about what OS they are using, and unless there would be a pushback against almost every computer that could be bought having Windows preinstalled nothing would change.
I doubt the majority of people if given the option to have their current work station transformed to a Linux workstation with all files intact and have FOSS programs to replace their current ones (Office -> Libre) in a single click would want to. This is assuming that some how someone developed a way to scan their current Windows set up and implement some sort of auto installer and configurator with a single click. People like what they are used to.
I wish it won't happen. I think we are at a sweet spot where most those who really value the benefits of open source software (the major ones being having the code available, the customisability) can get by by using FOSS almost or completely exclusively. In order for this to grow to such big market shares as 20% or 30%, let aside en-masse, some of that needs to be given up.
But I think that it's possible for FOSS systems to infiltrate institutions where workstation and servers run Linux based OSes or *BSD systems, if they also swith to LibreOffice etc. for their work. This is happening, sort of, but maybe in the long run it may become a near complete change. Consumer stuff, on the other hand, I think that's quite hard, and possibly undesirable for us.
That's why you don't use "do whatever you want" licenses like MIT. It's begging to be exploited.
Not really. Today, since some time, the industry and the users do compensate most major free and open source software in different ways, mostly by donations, recurring or not, or by employing major contributors.
I only use FOSS on my computer, and am quite content. The only bits of proprietary software I really use are those on my phone: WhatsApp, Spotify, Wordreference, and Google Maps. I think I could set up a Cyanogen (or whatever it's become) system, but I don't think it's worth the hassle. Still, on Android, quite a bit of software I use is FOSS: Firefox, K9 Mail, to name the main ones.
But I'm one of those who live in Emacs. So apart from Emacs, Firefox, Zotero, Simple Scan, and a PDF reader (I'm using Atril these days, a nicety it has is that the Ctrl+N where I can open multiple instances of the same file and view text, notes & references at the same time), I don't know what the experience is really like. So a person who comes and wants to "port" the MS Office + some other apps experience, IDK how welcom they'd feel, TBH. I do like LibreOffice, sort of, but I generally use it for viewing documents. Those who need to work with and create and share office documents would really struggle with compatibility problems both at UI level (collaboration) and at file format level. I (ab)use Gimp infrequently, but I lack the experience to compare it w/ Photoshop.
I used to code, now I work with prose, so my setup generally works with me. But especially for gaming and office work the paradigm is different. And a guy like me cannot understand that very well. Yet if I kept on programming, I'd represent a stereotypical-ish contributor to FOSS. So maybe that's why it doesn't work for most non-techies: we look at it from different points and what we want is different. We want paint and canvas, or a Nikon F3, they love their phone's camera and are fine with it.
What do you use for prose? I'm mostly on Org-Mode myself. I still haven't used Fountain Mode for screenwriting, but it seems great.
I use Org mode too. I haven't done any screenwriting, but if I did, I'd probably try to do it with Org first (shouldn't be too hard to set up an exporter to plain text for it). It works great for any sort of prose and also verse (there is a
#+BEGIN/END_VERSEenvironment). I've recently started to translate a book, and am using org mode for that too, I have barely started but so far it seems to work for me. Split screen, a scan of the book on top, the org mode buffer below.Fountain markup is screenplay specific, and it exports correctly to every format a screenwriter needs, while respecting industry standards. Even a slight variation in format could give your reader a bad impression. That’s one of the reasons why most people rely on specialized software and formats for this kind of thing.
Certainly, but it should be possible to make org export to same formats too (or to Fountain markup itself).
I don't think it's possible to export from Org to Fountain just yet. Am I missing something?
Org exposes the APIs to make such an exporter. What I meant was that I would probably try write an exporter to export to required format, should I write and publish or share a screenplay. That is because so much of my writing happens inside org mode that that would be worth it for me.
Cool! If you do that, don't forget to share!
I think FOSS needs to be more accessible. I think a focus on a FOSS core is a much higher priority, and the less important stuff will FOSSify in its own time. We focus on compatibility, get it so where people can actually continue on without having to make sacrifices on program choice, then we can look at creating FOSS alternatives for whatever.
I can tell you, I love Debian to death, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be using it if I couldn't run Steam and Discord on here.
In terms of what I agree with, I am hardline in favor of Free software. This is for almost purely ideological reasons...I appreciate the practical advantages to "FOSS" things, but I would not care that much if that were the only thing. I tend not to lump Free and open source software together for that reason.
In my real life use, I don't really believe that the way to solve problems are personal lifestyle choices. I do some to make myself feel better (not eating meat, using Free software when I can, picking up trash), but I don't think they're a meaningful way forward. So that's how I balance out my usage. I play games, I use discord, I use proprietary drivers. I'm not living the Stallman life. Still, I try to use Free things when I can. I'm less compelled if the best option is simply open source, but I go for that as well sometimes.
Since I don't think we're ever going to get so many conscious users out there doing what's best for the world, imo there's only two ways to "win" this fight. There's simply making software so superior to the closed and proprietary stuff out there that everyone will move over simply because it's the best for the average human. I don't know how likely this is since the resources of closed competitors are so insane, but with things like Windows getting so cocky and abusing their users more than ever right as the casual usability of the "FOSS" alternatives spikes...there's certainly an opening.
The other way is a radical political move that gives us rights over the software we use, and imo this is what truly needs to happen. Though I don't want to just make this comment my communist soapbox, so I'll leave it at that.
Some of my own personal observations over the years.
The best version control for managing static resources, such as images is probably still Perforce. Which is proprietary, though some of it's tools are FOSS, and the Perforce Workshop supplies a bit of a community.
However, git-lfs seeks to correct that, and does a fairly good job of it, allowing you to version artistic (or any difficult-to-diff) files without issue. Socially, it's integrated into GitHub, because it's their project. It's also part of GitLab (the only platform that is FOSS itself, of the 3) and Bitbucket. I believe all three allow you to display images such as PSDs, and though it's been a while since I checked, I believe at least GitHub does side-by-side comparisons.
(Aside: Mercurial has a similar system, but discourage it's use.)
Thanks that's cool.
Can you render iOS / Android app layout files as an image and diff them, comment & review on some selected box of the image, reflect back to the source code coordinates and elements? Also we kinda need a headless Chrome to render SPA final pages. Some of the page require steps to get into so the review process need to be stateful. In coding we have tests to do this but we dont have equivalent for non-code assets.
Also the tool chain integration is essential. Someday a direct versioning tool menu in Adobe CS would boost popularity.
Mostly the latter, for me. I might be an ideal "target market" for Linux on the desktop; I've been building computers since I was little, and am comfortable with a command line. My first instinct with computer problems is "alright, let's open you up and see what the deal is", not "welp time to take this back to the my local Gateway/Compaq/Wang dealer". With that said, I've tried Linux in the past and always left because it's too much "phatic" computing. Computing that's about computing for computing's sake -- using the computer so that you can use the computer.
That was fun when I was a teen, but I just don't have space in my life for that anymore. I have stuff to do that I want to get done when I'm using my main hardware, and it always seems to come down to "well, there's a FOSS alternative that does 85% of what you need with 75% of the convenience and 50% of the UI quality", or the even-worse "well, let's just go have a peek at GitHub and..."
For hobby purposes, phatic computing/fucking around is fine (I like monkeying with vintage computers), but on my primary desktop/laptop/phone I have no patience for it.
Regular people will never care about FOSS just because it's FOSS. They will choose FOSS when it's so good, so easy and so handy that it becomes the obvious, no-brainer, 100% compatible choice. You know, when everyone trades:
But what would it take for more FOSS software to achieve feature-parity and truly compete with closed-source alternatives? I think they should charge for binaries and support, but release the source. Plain and simple. Even Stallman would approve.
You could say "why not donations?", but I think a regular price tag is simpler for the regular consumer. And a nice, simple, modern, commercial looking website that even my grandma can understand, with a giant button that takes you right to the purchase, and then right to clear download and install instructions that anyone can follow and always work.
Any distro/individual would have the means to repackage and provide its own support, but I bet lot's of customers would prefer getting support from the actual developer.
I care about it quite a bit, and exclusively run free software (with the exception of one or two sites with proprietary JavaScript). However, I don't think most people will care for a long time (if ever). Most people probably couldn't tell you what "free software" or "open source" means, so if you want to win over users, I think it will have to be on practical merits alone; most just want something that works, and if something FOSS is the best practical option, they will use it, but they won't choose the FOSS option when something else free in price but not libre is better.
What I like about FOSS in general is that it makes the user operating system environment exciting again from a competition point of view.
The recent controversy around the Linux kernel project and Linus personally is interesting however. Although I'm glad Linus is learning to take a chill pill I'm not sure that everything alongside it is necessarily great for the community itself. My main concern by it as a user is that the code of conduct changes are going to be used as a weapon against other people in that community to push them out and that may impact the improvements I get to otherwise benefit from as a user. For a long time the benefit from Linus's heavy handed approach and the simple "be excellent to each other" rules are that the absolute best quality and highest standards have been reasonably maintained throughout.
There was certainly room for improvement with the way people communicated with each other, but I guess time will tell the outcomes of these changes and what that means for Linux.