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Martin believes everyone should have access to free quality software.
Thanks so much🙏
You don't lose money when people use a competitors service/product over yours. That money wasn't yours to lose.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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Yet, the companies cry about losing money due to online piracy. At this point it's eĹştremally funny
for me, anyway, they didn't lose money because if i couldn't pirate it, I just wouldn't watch. I'm told this is a common thought process
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Tell that to all of the monopolies that have totally captured a market segment.
Also shouting out Krita as a Photoshop alternative for digital painting, digital art.
How is its CMYK profiles in your opinion?
I disagree with that framing, someone not buying your shit is not the same as you losing money. Inkscape saved millions for graphic designers, which is very different. Adobe was not entitled to that money, you can't lose something that was never yours.
Subtle distinction, but actually pretty huge. I agree with you. Companies also use this to say that pirating is stealing, when they never had the business in the first place.
Exactly. I'm pirating because I can't afford to pay hundreds of dollars each month to watch all the movies and shows that I do. If I didn't have the opportunity to pirate, I still wouldn't afford it legitimately...
It's also a great way to demo games and other software if you can afford it before you waste money on something that has no value to you. This is especially useful when you're on a tight budget.
Just put in your credit card for the 7 day trial! Totally easy to cancel, pinky promise
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"I bought a lottery ticket and didn't win. I lost 50 millions dollars!"
- adobe
You are right, of course, but I personally draw a great of pleasure from imaging the CEO of Adobe screaming, "CURSE YOU MARTIN OWENS!!!"
I had exactly 0 intention of ever buying anything from Adobe.
Inkscape gave me an alternative to the high seas. And it happens to do everything I need it to, although it's way more powerful than the simple vector graphics conversions I use it for.
10/10, Adobe never lost money from me getting Inkscape. They lost the game before they knew I was a player.
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People like him are why I still have hope in tech. May the machine bless him eternally.
those dollars were not adobe's to lose but users' to save
This is the heart of the matter. You can't lose what you never had.
Lost dollars because of free software and lost dollars because of piracy are both imaginary numbers.
It seems just fitting that he wears a hat that you need bezier curves to draw perfectly with vector graphics!
I am a Corel kind of bird myself, having used it both professionally (which is how I got started with it) and at home for a couple of decades now. I will say two things about that:
In its current version Inkscape is roughly on par with were CorelDraw was in its 4.0 state or thereabouts (which I still have a copy of, on like seventeen 3.5" floppy disks!) which sounds like damning with faint praise but it really isn't considering that Inkscape costs nothing to use.
However, one factor that I think most people don't think about is that Inkscape is currently the best software I've ever used, bar none, for ripping apart .pdf documents made by other software, for the purposes of monkeying with their contents. And that's a ten story tall flaming middle finger to Adobe, and completely obviates the need for 99.9999999% of all users to ever have to pay for the "pro" version of Adobe Acrobat or whatever they're calling it this week just to be able to made minor adjustments to a .pdf.
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I appreciate him very much, OSS maintainers and devs dont get enough praise. Also I dont get the intense entitlement some people have towards unpaid OSS devs and mainatiners, they think that they somehow deserve a product equal to that of a corporate offering while not offering any money or code.
It's because they haven't thought about it.
They're so used to the paradigm. I pay money. I get product. I get support.
So when they get the product but they don't pay money, their brain short circuits and thinks they deserve some kind of support.
In a capitalistic world, communistic projects are confusing. Which is sad.
People equate “cost” with “value”. If something has no cost, it has no value. There’s an old story about computer mice that is apt. An electronics store sells computer mice. Some are expensive, some are cheap. The store has found that one specific mouse is really really reliable. Some of the more expensive mice get constant warranty returns or RMA requests. But not this one mouse. This one mouse is built well, feels good, and works great. Every single desk in the store is using one of these mice. And this specific mouse also happens to be extremely cheap. As in, one of the cheapest that the store carries.
Sales floor employees struggle to sell it, even when they personally use it every day and know it’s a superior product, because customers see the low price and assume it is a low quality product. The customers are directly equating cost with value. And so the store manager does something sort of backwards. They increase the price of the mouse, to be around the same price as the others. Suddenly, this specific mouse is flying off of the shelves. People are now seeing the high price, and assuming that means the mouse is good.
Another place you experience this is when helping your family with tech support. Every single IT worker has experienced the “you updated Chrome on my computer six months ago, and now it’s broken. You broke my computer” complaint from a tech-illiterate relative. They see a friend or relative with a computer issue, they know how to solve said issue, they try to be helpful, and it blows back on them when the computer breaks in the distant future. This is largely because the IT person didn’t charge said friend or family member for their services.
In grandma’s eyes, your tech support service were free, so it has no value. You can’t be trusted as a real IT person, because your services are free. Charging a small “friends and family discount” type of thing actually cements in their mind that you do this for a living. You literally do this professionally. Even if you’re only charging them $5 for an hour of work, when you normally get paid $50 per hour. Again, you can call it the friends and family discount if you need to. But by charging them something, all of those “you broke my computer” complaints suddenly dry up. Because now you’re not just the grandson who plays with computers; you’re a professional in a specialized trade. You know what you’re doing, so it couldn’t have been your fault that the computer broke. It’s not really a friends and family discount; it’s a “stop blaming me when you download viruses” fee.
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Kudos to Mr. Owens and all Inkscape developers. Inkscape is a masterpiece.
Ive used both inskape and illustrator and inkscape is better and has been better ux wise since day 1 for me.
He has a Samson Meteor microphone. Same as mine. He is cool in my book :D
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The only time I used Adobe Illustrator was when it was brand new, in 1987. I may have used early versions of Photoshop, but never as my "daily driver." So I might not be the most knowledgeable about Adobe software.
But the thing I MOST resent Adobe for was buying and killing Macromedia... I really really liked Macromedia Fireworks (raster, vector, and object graphics editor). Fireworks could do a lot of the things Adobe software could for a fraction of the price AND without having to use multiple applications to get the job done.
Inkscape is remarkable, and maybe someday someone will merge some raster image object tools into it, and then it might begin to resemble the Fireworks of 20 years ago when Adobe killed it.
Thank you Martin and Inkscape-team!
Open source software does not cause a loss of $ it causes everyone else gain.
Inkscape is one of my favorite applications out there. I use it almost daily, both for my day job and hobbies. Thanks Martin!
Inkscape is goated and so is Martin, respect 🫡
I'm not a pro but do some shit from time to time. Between Inkscape and Gimp I never needed anything else for images. If only Gimp had better tools for animated gifs... still serviceable tho haven't tried the new Gimp yet.
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