What would free creative software cost, if it were not free ?
Lets consider your support of the Libre graphics meeting; as if it were actually paying various software vendors. What would it cost per product?
Illustrator $599
But Inkscape is free, forever .
Inkscape has a brilliant creative canvas with easy to use tools featuring advanced features that help you achieve your outcome faster.
Photoshop $649 or $999 for extended
But Gimp & Krita are free, forever
Crap selection methods? soix selection !
silly rescale? Liquid rescale !
open raster and stacks more !
InDesign $699
Scribus is free, forever.
Scribus provides outstanding control over creating PDF documents. CMYK, Spot colours, bleed, registration & crop marks, large volume text manipulations, preflight checking…. Absolutely what you need to have your printer to meet your EXACT needs. no more “send me the *indd files so i can alter/destroy your final work. Scribus output speaks for itself.
Autodesk maya or 3dsmax $hitloads
I stopped my flirt with modelling & animation in 2002 so I wont speak about Autodesk products versus blender.. but i think one or two blender examples can speak for themselves…. 
But what’s the total cost going to be?
What do we pay in pure software licenses for a single workstation that can offer most creative graphical services:
AUD $4,455 - Adobe Creative Suite
AUD $5,415 - Maya unlimited
AUD $3,790 - 3Ds Max
AUD $703 - FontlabStudio
AUD $2,167 - Fontlab AsiaFont Studio
AUD $1,400 - Final Cut Pro
Total AUD $17,930
That price DOES NOT include the insanely expensive video compositing software like flame flint or inferno or the automated publishing software used for tricks that inkscape and gimp can do on any server with their advanced command line interfaces.
And don’t forget!
This is only the current version of the software mentioned. Upgrades are forced on us by commercial software vendors.
I haven’t yet visited a studio who was able to purchase a copy of CS2 once CS3 was released. All the major stores took it off the shelves and all studios wanted to keep their workflow on CS2 and still hire new staff…. ‘Staying put’ meant they couldn’t contract to an external agency running the most recent software and be able to manipulate the files afterwards.. this wouldn’t happen with 100% open standards.
I’m not trying to say that there is a complete feature parity between free graphics software and the proprietary offerings; because the missing features go both ways. I do however argue that a proprietary workflow is effectively throwing your time and money in the bin.
Everyone spends time to learn software, so when learning a proprietary workflow; we are paying, only to pay again and again.
When we learn free software, missing features considered, once we have them. they are with us for good, and everyone else too
I really want to play on the fear that you don’t know how much its going to cost next time around .. and that you’re locked into the workflow by spending the time learning it ..
The innovation seeded at LGM is unquantifiable!
- developers attending LGM don’t focus on product pillars
If things like better selection algorithms or precision geometry libraries are possible to implement: LGM developers go there! who knows when it will pop up to serve your needs - developers attending LGM freely give extra attention to specialised industries like typography or 3d imaging
we make software better just because we can.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
And you can add to the price the equivalents of little gems like Agave or Fyre (yeah, those would not be so spectacularly priced, but they add up).
April 15th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I am going to miss due to Graphic Design but I will keep track about LGM3.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Hi Andy,
unfortunately what you list is not total cost, only licensing cost. A bigger part of total cost to the adoption of any new software version is training cost and the loss of knowledge/experience which is no longer applicable to the newer version.
Agree with you that for somebody starting on the green field the time spent learning the proprietary workflow is more expensive than the time spent learning the open workflow because the knowledge will have shorter useful life as the proprietary guys impose an “upgrade” to milk the cow and extoll more licensing fees on the upgrade. Unfortunately only a few people, mostly kids, start on the green field every year, and the proprietary guy understand the concept and work hard at lobbying schools and university to teach them the reflexes needed for the proprietary workflow before they enter the job market.
If the licensing money inventorized above would be donated to FOSS development, it would go a much longer way in terms of features, no doubt. As you say, the features argument goes both way.
It’s the usability argument that is asymmetrical, and the proprietary guys have the human reflex on their side.
I wish I could do away with Photoshop in my workflow. So far, all my attempts to replace it with FOSS have failed. I did replace web, email and office software, and at the above link are my observations of why it worked, and why OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird can now go on the offensive.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
It’s a “SIOX” tool, mate, not “soix”
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 am
Just curious since you included them in the list - does FOSS have ‘font lab alternatives’ ?
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 am
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/301_999/942.html
April 29th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Andy just mailed me.
The open source alternative for font creation is fontforge - you can find it at fontforge.sourceforge.net