Andy Fitzsimon

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.

I was just checking out our Pledgie page for LGM3 and guess what ??

We’ve passed $8000 !

This means means the user community for free graphics software is now a gold sponsor! we’re on our way to being a corner stone sponsor and then achieving our $20,000 target !

LGM is the only shared expense of all free graphics software. Certainly a worthwhile investment for the future of your unencumbered creativity!

you cannot put a price on quality, freedom and this much potential

Every year all projects gain a huge boost of development and vision thanks to the discussions that take place at LGM.

You cannot predict the amazing things that will take place at LGM.

• will Blender uncover a new compositing method for video,
• will inkscape enable a new type of spline through cairo?
• will pango get used by fontforge ?
• will ufraw and hugin share more code ?
• One thing is certain;

All free creative software is improved during LGM. and everyone learns more in the process.
This is a one of a kind event!

Over the past weeks I’ve been using rawhide (or fedora 9) on a eeepc, macbook air and inspiron 9300.. I’m certainly impressed with the setup this release has given me.

My personal highlights are: inkscape .46, firefox3, openjdk & the encrypted filesystem awesomeness ( which i dont use on the MBA or EEE for flash reasons.. actually i upgraded to rawhide from eeedora so they would use ext2 but thats another story )

Fedora 9 here we come!

From rejon’s post:

We are trying to raise USD$ 20,000 in the next 16 days before Friday, April 18th in order to support the conference and travel from so many Free and Open Source software developers to attend the 3rd Annual Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) conference in Wroc?aw, Poland May 8 - 11 - the premiere event bringing together free and open source creative software application developers for a productive international conference (emphasis on productivity!).

This is really a big community drive for all you users, supporters, and companies to donate money so that all us free and open source developers may get together to have a productive face to face meeting. The last two LGM’s have been invaluable to coordinate, consolidate and create the future in a free and open source way.

For the next 16 days, we want all the supporting projects to put a note about this pledge drive right on their front page of their website! You can use the badge below as well to help us raise money!

You can also help by spreading the url to our pledgie campaign: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/613

And, don’t forget to digg this story: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Support_the_Libre_Graphics_Meeting_2008

More from the Pledgie.com page:

What is the Libre Graphics Meeting?

The Libre Graphics Meeting brings together developers and users of free software graphics applications, such as the GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, Krita, the Open Clipart Library and more.

In its third edition, the organization needs your help! You can support your favorite graphics application, and ensure that the travel costs of as many volunteer developers as possible are paid to ensure that this edition of the conference is more successful that its predecessors.

Where will the money go?

We have kept costs associated with infrastructure to a minimum. Over 80% of the conference budget will be spent on subsidizing travel and accommodation costs for developers.

A non-profit organization

All donations will be made to the conference organizers via the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)3 tax exempt US-based non-profit, so donations will be tax deductible for US taxpayers. We would like to thank the GNOME Foundation for their support.