Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!)
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So many WTFs. I'd back it if I thought it had a snowball's chance in hell of ever delivering.
Seriously, I could see the entire funds raised so far just for the inevitable lawsuit.
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@Arantor How much money they're thinking it's gonna cost to replace Adobe?
Wow, I hope the project starter is a very good programmer
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Seriously, I could see the entire funds raised so far just for the inevitable lawsuit.
I thought you were just talking about the name. Then I clicked.
(I'll save all of you from clicking)
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@TimeBandit they could put that money in to make gimp suck a little less, and maybe they’d actually get anything at all in return.
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But first, you'd need to convince GIMP developers that their product has bad usability. Even with money, good luck with that.
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@Zerosquare maybe send a screenshot of “Google search results for
draw a circle in GIMP”.
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"What's the problem? It makes perfect sense when you know how GIMP works.
"
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
"What's the problem? It makes perfect sense when you know how GIMP works.
"No lie detected. It works poorly, which makes perfect sense
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Fun fact, a friend of a friend of mine (we have sat in a pub together and consumed alcohol) is a GIMP contributor, and he says he sees nothing wrong with the UI.
So, they're not interested in fixing the things that are wrong with it because in their mind, everything's fine.
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@Zerosquare maybe send a screenshot of “Google search results for
draw a circle in GIMP”.
My results were interesting:
- Open your image in any other bitmap editor.
- Draw a circle using its ellipse tool while holding Shift.
- Save it and reopen the file in GIMP.
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My results were interesting:
- Open your image in any other bitmap editor.
- Draw a circle using its ellipse tool while holding Shift.
2.1 Print the image
2.2 Put it on a wooden table
2.3 Take a picture of it - Save it and reopen the file in GIMP.
FTFY
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@Zerosquare maybe send a screenshot of “Google search results for
draw a circle in GIMP”.
So I tried to search ‘draw a circle in photoshop’. And … there are several alternatives, but one is pretty much exactly like gimp, the other also involves circular selection, then there is an ‘elliptical marquee’ that seems to live in some nested menu, and yet another way similar to gimp involving paths and brushes.
Gimp was never designed for drawing simple illustrations. It was designed as a free alternative to photoshop specifically. The primary set of usecases for photoshop does not include drawing straight lines and ellipses, because you rarely do that when retouching photos.
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@Bulb maybe so, but it is the de facto tool for all kinds of image editing on linux, including simple things.
Also, this reads like “Word was designed for sending massive amounts of form letters, not to have bold text”. It’s fucking trivial functionality that Paint can do, it should be easy.
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@Bulb maybe so, but it is the de facto tool for all kinds of image editing on linux, including simple things.
No, it is not. That's what gnome-paint, kpaint, xpaint an krita are for. Gimp isn't in the default generic selection in most distributions.
Also, this reads like “Word was designed for sending massive amounts of form letters, not to have bold text”.
Form letters have a lot of bold too, so word has to have bold, and there is not much to choose on bold, so it is inherently easy.
It’s fucking trivial functionality that Paint can do, it should be easy.
It's only easy when you just set color and thickness as in paint. But at the level of an artist that photoshop and gimp are designed for, there is a lot more options how to actually draw a circle, and when you are done with all of them, it won't be easy anyway. So it's better to design generic tools—paths and tracing selections—and just use them for everything. It's much simpler that way, and I do mean for the user, though they have to learn it at the beginning. But it's for the users who want to use that power. If you don't, install gnome-paint or kpaint or krita.
@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
But first, you'd need to convince GIMP developers that their product has bad usability. Even with money, good luck with that.
Well, the guy wanted to replace Adobe. That means Adobe Photoshop in large part. Gimp has a user experience similar to that. It's quite a bit behind, but the design principles are the same. So improving gimp is, indeed, appropriate suggestion here.
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So I tried to search ‘draw a circle in photoshop’. And … there are several alternatives, but one is pretty much exactly like gimp, the other also involves circular selection, then there is an ‘elliptical marquee’ that seems to live in some nested menu, and yet another way similar to gimp involving paths and brushes.
Well, yeah, Photoshop has shit usability too. GIMP only gets a bad rap because people who use it aren’t rationalised into defending it from sunk costs or professional cred
Affinity Photo & Designer, “Adobe alternatives” that you can own a perpetual licence for with the subtle distinction that they already exist on the market, have a perfectly normal ellipse tool that gets all the properties of a path and you can just convert it into an editable path at any point you want to fiddle with it more finely. But version 2 bumped up the cost significantly and you can no longer buy any 1.x release, so I have dial back the unabashed simping slightly. Also no linux support :(
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@Zerosquare maybe send a screenshot of “Google search results for
draw a circle in GIMP”.
So I tried to search ‘draw a circle in photoshop’. And … there are several alternatives, but one is pretty much exactly like gimp, the other also involves circular selection, then there is an ‘elliptical marquee’ that seems to live in some nested menu, and yet another way similar to gimp involving paths and brushes.
Gimp was never designed for drawing simple illustrations. It was designed as a free alternative to photoshop specifically. The primary set of usecases for photoshop does not include drawing straight lines and ellipses, because you rarely do that when retouching photos.
FWIW: In my version of Photoshop (CS6), the steps are the same as they are in Paint.net or Windows Paint: select the Ellipse Shape tool, set the color(s) and other drawing options, draw while holding Shift. (The exact methods for things like fill/no fill, outline/stroke width, and such vary between the programs.)
There are more complex ways, but the simple version is also there for speed.
I do not have GIMP installed on here to compare.Edit: I installed GIMP 2.10.34. It doesn't appear to have an equivalent shape tool. There are various steps given on the web, but the simple one I followed goes: set the foreground and background colors you want, select the Ellipse Selection tool, draw your circle (holding Shift after starting to constrain to a circle), Edit/Fill with BG color, Select/Border... and set the stroke width for the border, Edit/Fill with FG color.
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@Bulb maybe so, but it is the de facto tool for all kinds of image editing on linux, including simple things.
You could say the equivalent tool on Windows is a wooden table.
Sure, mspaint and stuff are included, but so are gnome-paint etc.—some people know about them, some don't
Also, this reads like “Word was designed for sending massive amounts of form letters, not to have bold text”. It’s fucking trivial functionality that Paint can do, it should be easy.
Except GIMP actually was designed as a free Photoshop, Word only grew Mail Merge later.
It's more like saying MIDI is a trivial protocol, people used it on a fucking C64, so there's no excuse for not supporting MIDI in every program that can edit music. Well, no. For some people that's an essential use case, for some it ain't.
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there's no excuse for not supporting MIDI in every program that can edit music.
Well, yeah.... Is... is that no longer a thing? Shit, I guess I need newer software...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
there's no excuse for not supporting MIDI in every program that can edit music.
Well, yeah.... Is... is that no longer a thing? Shit, I guess I need newer software...
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@Tsaukpaetra I believe it is still a thing for connecting instruments among themselves and with computers — not that I know a lot about that.
There's even a web api now: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_MIDI_API
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Mr. Abode looks very punchable. And for being a "creative professional" he's not very creative in coming up with names for his Creative suite replacement. He's completely ripping off everything about Adobe. Logo, design language, application design. Methinks he needs to go a course in legal and copyrights, but I guess a trial by fire will suffice here.
But wait, there's more:
I NEED MORE THAN JUST YOUR MONEY
Please don’t think you are going to back this project and that’s it.
I need the community to help develop the software.
You’ll be expected to help with surveys, suggesting features, and testing bits and pieces.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?
- You will be amongst the first people in the world to be using the suite of tools.
- You’ll get lifetime updates and the software is yours for life.
- You’ll have played a part in shaping the software for the world.
YOU CAN EVEN GET THE HOODIE!
I not only get to pay money to the kickstarter, I am expected to help develop these apps too? Amazing!
More relevant to this is the fact I’ve been working with technology my whole life. I studied advanced art and design, and I have been using well-known software tools since the 90s.
using != designing
But no worries, he has professionals with him:
THE GEEKS
I’ve found an amazingly passionate team of geeks, with over 90 years combined experience in software development behind them.
They are in it for the love of the project and the community. They believe in the ethos and they want to help.
They are in it for the passion! (But they still need money.)
THE MONEY SIDE
To make amazing word class software costs money. There’s no point doing this unless it’s really really good. The geeks are being extremely generous but they will need to be paid. So your pledge is going to be used to make sure they can live whilst they do the work.
Now let's see here... 90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people. And with that team and the community he's going to develop four Adobe-like apps in what timeframe?
Good software takes time so I hope to share version one with backers this time next year.
A full year. That's... about 600 man-days per application assuming a team of 9, 8-hour workdays and 3 months per app.
And for the best part:
Risks and challenges
I’ll be keeping you posted every step of the way. You’ll be part of the process.
Our initial job spec looks like delivery next year is highly achievable.
Until we delve into building the suite it's not certain what issues we might face, but I trust the team.
I've deliberately given this project plenty of time, so even if we hit some major stumbling blocks it feels realistic to deliver it on time.
As the majority of pledges will be a digital download there’s no shipping or logistics, which makes things easier.
If your pledge includes a hoodie we will get that too that will ship separately and be with you before the release.So... Delivery next year is highly achieveable, but building has not started yet. And they don't know about the risks in building applications, even with that over 90 years of software development. I see that experience is really showing here! No mention if they have the design spec done yet or not. (Although most likely any sort of design document does not exist, and they will just build this ad-hoc by copying features as they go.) One year to build four professional apps from scratch with a small team is also "plenty of time". But, ya know, I can at least get a hoodie (seized by Adobe for copyright infringement).
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Moved this into its own topic, because I found it slightly larger than a bite!
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@Atazhaia but mah cheese!
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I’m curious what the software stack is they’re going to be using. I’m also curious if they even know that yet.
Are you going to get sued by Adobe?
I have no idea, but if they come - we are ready for shenanigans. ;PI've not been sued yet, if you scroll down the main page and watch the 'New Reality' video you'll see an IP lawyer talking about some of my previous work. I think everyone knows where I stand on issues like this.
Saying that I'm a contemporary artist and use the medium of satire in my work as a form of social critique. The project is a non-profit, so commerce really isn't the main point at all. I like to use parody in a lot of my internet art. I believe if an artist authors software, and uses it to be critical it should be protected by the law, just like any other artwork would be.
Yeah, good luck with that.
is it going to be open source?
As much as I would love it to be, I can't see a way to make it as good as I want by making it free. We are looking into duel licensing models.En garde!
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I missed the FAQ section. Maybe that will contain answers.
What systems will this work on? Web, Mac, Pc, Tablets, Linux?
We need to be a little realistic about what is achievable for version 1.
So we are firmly focused on Mac and PC support. There are no plans for web at the moment.
The impress app will work on Android and iOS and is a little like express or canva.
Linix - I hear you, we will scope it out, if it's not really hard we will try our best!A little realistic, so two platforms with different architectures, in the already
shortvery long time of a year of development. But if you as a Linix user was hoping for native support? Well, seeing as this professional team just needs a year for this it will be easy-peasy! Just not for v1.Are you going to get sued by Adobe?
I have no idea, but if they come - we are ready for shenanigans. ;P
I've not been sued yet, if you scroll down the main page and watch the 'New Reality' video you'll see an IP lawyer talking about some of my previous work. I think everyone knows where I stand on issues like this.
Saying that I'm a contemporary artist and use the medium of satire in my work as a form of social critique. The project is a non-profit, so commerce really isn't the main point at all. I like to use parody in a lot of my internet art. I believe if an artist authors software, and uses it to be critical it should be protected by the law, just like any other artwork would be.
x
Yes, being sued by a multi-billion dollar company over obvious (and avoidable) copyright infringements is just "shenanigans" and he's "ready for it". All the
stealingborrowing of logos and design language is satire! Building a competing software suite using the "chinese knock-off" style of naming is all fine because it is SATIRE! SATIRE and PARODY! It shields against any lawsuit!is it going to be open source?
As much as I would love it to be, I can't see a way to make it as good as I want by making it free. We are looking into duel licensing models.
We most certainly stand on the shoulders of all the amazing open-source development that has happened in this space and could not do a project like this without that foundation. We will most certainly be contributing what we make to that space.
At the moment we will be aiming to make this as affordable to creators as we can, with plenty of options for hackspaces, schools etc.. and a 'pay it forward' type approach.
To me 'free software' doesn't mean no money it means freedom, as in it's yours and you do what you want with it.
To answer the question, it will be a paid program, with as much of the opensource ethos intact as we can possibly balance whilst keeping the quality we need.
Wow. This is amazing. Didn't he talk about this being a "non-profit" and "commerce not being the main point", but still he is making a COMMERCIAL product. Yeah, I know, it can still be a non-profit, but he is asking for a lot of money for the finished product.
And "standing on the shoulders" of the open source community? Sounds an awful lot like this is gonna be a rebranded GIMP which, uh, I hope he's read the GPL and adheres to it or he's gonna get sued from two ends! And, "free software" does imply that the source code is available, otherwise it is proprietary software by definition. He can think whatever he wants but that's the actual meaning of the words.
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
duel licensing models.
Choose your EULAs, take ten clauses, turn and litigate.
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What's the Development process - timeline?
We already have the backbone of most of the main functionality here.
The target budget is really a token payment for the team as a thank you for the love and dedication.Stage 1: (right now) - Duration 45 days. Build the crowdfunding campaign. The more awareness and community support we can build the better the project will be in the long run. This is all about getting it out there and raising the money for the first version.
Stage 2: Until early Sept. We will be working with the backer community to find out what features you want, and this will be a democratic process. Feature surveys etc. We will also ship hoodies.
Stage 3: Estimated delivery - Feb 2024, First beta build - and this will take about 6 months. Then we will ask some of the community to take that for a spin and act as a test group.
Stage 4: Estimated April 2024, We will compile that feedback and then re-iterate for a second beta - another 2 months.
Stage 5: Estimated July 2024, Bug fixes and polishing. At this point, all the pretty UI stuff comes into play and the graphics team in my studio starts getting busy with it.
Stage 6: Estimated July 2024, We deliver a final beta to all the backers - our aim is to do that within one year.
Stage 7: Estimated August 2024, Collect any feedback and bug reports.
Stage 8: We will make amendments to that final beta.
Stage 9: October 2024, About 16 months after project end - delivery of Version 1 to backers.
Stage 10: Public release of Abode, estimated early 2025.
So, right now it's "awareness" and building support. After that it done will be when they will have their community do their design for them through "democratic design" which I am sure will go wonderfully and not at all crash and burn horribly. And once that is finalized they will start building the apps, which will only take 6 monhts to reach the beta stage! So, that's now... 300 man-days of development to have a finished beta of a Photoshop-like. Much realistic goal, such wow! But they do have another couple months for beta 2, and then another couple for final beta. And the final beta is apparently not the final beta, because they also have an "amendments to the final beta" stage. It's a lot of betas involved, that's for sure. And then, finally, during Q1 2025 we will have public release.
Also, gotta love the graphics team which will only need less than a month to do all the design work as it's both to start and be done in july next year.
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@Parody said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
FWIW: In my version of Photoshop (CS6), the steps are the same as they are in Paint.net or Windows Paint: select the Ellipse Shape tool, set the color(s) and other drawing options, draw while holding Shift. (The exact methods for things like fill/no fill, outline/stroke width, and such vary between the programs.)
There are more complex ways, but the simple version is also there for speed.
It gets problematic when you want to do more complex things with paths. It’s like you’re working with shapes in Illustrator or InDesign, but not quite. I’ve not yet worked out what the Paths window is actually good for, for example.
Quick test: I draw a (near-)circle. The Paths window shows:
Let’s add a triangle, I will get a second layer/path with that, right?
WTF did my ellipse shape go?! I can’t select it anymore with the white arrow tool, so I can’t edit it either.
Right, undo that so I get the ellipse back as an editable path, then add a path/layer/thing with the + button:
… so I can draw the triangle on that and keep the ellipse as well:
I had Path 1 selected when I started drawing the triangle!However, AFAIK I’ve also had times when multiple shapes appeared as the same “layer” and all remained editable. There is some really major
ery going on with this whole shapes thing in Photoshop, to the extent that if I need anything more than the odd shape in an image, I would rather draw it in Illustrator and then import the file into Photoshop.
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As much as I like to shit on badly named programs, I'm going back on topic.
I’m calling it now. This is bait for Adobe’s legal department and the second a legal notice shows up he's going to call this performance art.
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Clearly, though, the icons are misordered:
Unless the ONdesign icon is supposed to read "On":
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Now let's see here... 90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people.
His geeks better be cheap too. That's 10k-20k per geek (less if you consider the original 50k goal), which isn't that much if you expect them to work full time for any duration.
If it were one app, without all the random time sinks (compatibility with normal apps and workflows) and didn't involve a ton of user testing, I'd say it's a neat challenge with a good team and serious money to burn. It would probably still not finish in time and it'd probably end up with a bunch of rough edges. But as outlined there and a high probability of random lawyer inquisition? Heh.
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From the kickstarter:
For a long time, we owned the software we used
That "long time" was exactly never. We owned a licence-to-use for the software we used, unless we wrote it ourselves (including questions of "work for hire", thanks).
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@Steve_The_Cynic while that’s
the point he’s trying to make (in the fashion for regular mortals) is that we used to just buy software and that was that, none of this ongoing rental model.
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@Steve_The_Cynic sure, but now you don't even own that. For Adobe stuff, your license only works as long as Adobe wants to run its activation servers. But all of that is, afaik, a thing of the past anyway since now they only offer the subscription model.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
From the kickstarter:
For a long time, we owned the software we used
That "long time" was exactly never. We owned a licence-to-use for the software we used, unless we wrote it ourselves (including questions of "work for hire", thanks).
In many legislations it came pretty close though. You could fuck around with it and decompile it to fix bugs or make it work with something they tried to keep you from using it with for instance, or you could resell the license.
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@topspin For a long while after Adobe released their subscription model, it was possible all the same to still buy a paid-up permanent licence, but the option wasn't remotely easy to find on their site. I'd like to have a new permanent licence for for Acrobat (Writer) to replace my one for Acrobat 8 (not supported on Windows 10+, and possibly not on Windows 7 either), but ...
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@dcon said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Seriously, I could see the entire funds raised so far just for the inevitable lawsuit.
I thought you were just talking about the name. Then I clicked.
(I'll save all of you from clicking)
can't they even get their CSSright?
They ought to shift their tiny house a little left to correctly fit below the roof.
Fucktards.
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@BernieTheBernie said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@dcon said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Seriously, I could see the entire funds raised so far just for the inevitable lawsuit.
I thought you were just talking about the name. Then I clicked.
(I'll save all of you from clicking)
can't they even get their CSSright?
They ought to shift their tiny house a little left to correctly fit below the roof.
Fucktards.It's not going to matter when Adobe sue them into oblivion
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@cvi said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Now let's see here... 90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people.
His geeks better be cheap too. That's 10k-20k per geek (less if you consider the original 50k goal), which isn't that much if you expect them to work full time for any duration.
Minus the cost of the hoodies!
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@boomzilla said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@cvi said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Now let's see here... 90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people.
His geeks better be cheap too. That's 10k-20k per geek (less if you consider the original 50k goal), which isn't that much if you expect them to work full time for any duration.
Minus the cost of the hoodies!
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@cvi said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Now let's see here... 90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people.
His geeks better be cheap too. That's 10k-20k per geek (less if you consider the original 50k goal), which isn't that much if you expect them to work full time for any duration.
If it were one app, without all the random time sinks (compatibility with normal apps and workflows) and didn't involve a ton of user testing, I'd say it's a neat challenge with a good team and serious money to burn. It would probably still not finish in time and it'd probably end up with a bunch of rough edges. But as outlined there and a high probability of random lawyer inquisition? Heh.
How expensive is a geek to run a software cracking tool found on a random torrent anyway? Then just rebrand a few files and boom, ship it!
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I did look it up and a perpetual license of PaintShop Pro Standard is half of what he's asking for his suite. Even Ultimate would still be cheaper. And that's a fully functional Photoshop competitor that is available right now!
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
90 years of combined experience. If we assume 10-15 years per person that's a team of 6-9 people.
sounds more like a team of 180 person with 6 months experience
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
SATIRE and PARODY!
The whole project in essence
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@TimeBandit said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
a team of 180 person with 6 months experience
Those 6 months is the sum of the experience of the individuals, of course.
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@TimeBandit said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
SATIRE and PARODY!
The whole project in essence
He doesn’t have experience in software engineering, but apparently he does have extensive experience trolling Anish Kapoor.
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@kazitor said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
Affinity Photo & Designer, “Adobe alternatives” that you can own a perpetual licence for with the subtle distinction that they already exist on the market, have a perfectly normal ellipse tool that gets all the properties of a path and you can just convert it into an editable path at any point you want to fiddle with it more finely. But version 2 bumped up the cost significantly and you can no longer buy any 1.x release, so I have dial back the unabashed simping slightly. Also no linux support :(
They went from $50 to $70, yeah. I wish I'd picked them up during the pandemic for $25 per. (They're $55 per if you buy the suite.)
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@Atazhaia said in Abode unCreative Suite (includes hoodie!):
I’ve found an amazingly passionate team of geeks, with over 90 years combined experience in software development behind them.
Oh, he found 90 people on GeeksForHire?
