Don’t know about the U.S. but here it’s used to pay for water and sewer improvements, fire protection or road construction. All the things you pretty much want for your property but that’s off topic.
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Laughs in open source.
I have been saying this could happen for 2 years now. I am glad I coded diddly squat for CSP because before I choose krita it was one of the options.
But in a way I think it is curious this happens just before the China crisis is about to start. This is probably for CSP not to bankrupt but after the bubble this will remain for sure.
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There is quite interesting point of view from Pablo Dobarro - the guy who did very good sculpt additions for Blender3d. Now he is likely to be more commercial programmer (at iPad app):
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This is such a good thread for the other side.
In case of new CSP system, I believe that if you buy 2.0, then subscribe, get to 2.4, and stop paying, you’ll he back on 2.4. That’s not great. Other than that, allowing perpetual licenses, not threatening artists who choose to use older versions (for now? 
also yes, looking at you, Adobe), half a year before the new business model starts, that doesn’t sound terribly predatory.
In case of Krita, I’d love if Krita was both sustainable, maybe even could afford more developers than we have now, while also being free and accessible for broke artists.
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Very good points. The product of the company I work for is also subscription based otherwise it’s not sustainable. It’s a pretty niche branch software. However I don’t agree with the open source part. The mind set of our community is much different, it doesn’t really compare to commercial software.
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There are subscription models, there are paid models and there and donation funded models. Krita is donation funded — CONTRIBUTE!
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To be honest, I think this started cause covid forced a lot of anime and manga industry to work digitally from home. So now they got a big base that is capable of paying and they want to make it a service.
You mean the part where he says “They use “free updates” just for advertising, but there are no updates or minimal updates.”? That’s quite a statement he uses as an excuse, then bashes open source for taking advantage of “free advertising”.
I think a lot of people just feel betrayed about the whole thing. But it also most likely has to do with how you go about it. For one, there is more than one way to fund software development. For example, you can give out pro version for personal or individual use for low cost 1 time, and offer subscriptions to companies alongside other services like support or priority bugfixes and features. You can also make subscription for major upgrades, not just minor upgrades.
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I guess you mean you are back to 2.0 and yes that’s correct. I will be honest while i don’t fully agree with this it’s not as bad as people are making it to be at least for now.
Perpetual licenses still work, and you can still buy the major versions as one payment. I feel like a lot of panic is not justified.
The downside is the minor versions requiring a subscription however i started thinking about this on another way that makes more sense, at least for me.
In a way what we have are not minor version are early access features for the new version. The subscription allows you to use them before the next major release.
The downside is that unlike v1 that we would constantly get new feature updates what we are buying is the major version+ bugfixes.
Again i still don’t like this but it’s still better than a subscription model like adobe has cause this subscription is “optional”(in a way that you are kinda forced to if you really want the new updates) and you can just buy the software and use that version and not bother with subscription. And buy the next version if you really want the new features. At least you have somewhat of a choice.
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The gap between v1 and v2 was 10 years if I am correct it is a long wait. And to give an example from other csp user. Take example of liquefy feature that they added recently, if that feature or something similar to it which is really anticipated by users comes in 2.1 people would have keep on paying upgrade until a long time to keep using it. Atkeast they should have made such that you keep the version till which you paid.
I don’t believe it will take another 10 years when they are already talking about version 3
Btw liquify is already in CSP.
But yes you are correct about that, that’s why I said “optional”. And yes i agree there should be some way to keep to a certain version.
Yes I know I was mentioning it as an hypotetical example of a feature desired by users example . There can be something new and to use it people will have to subscribe which when they stop will be taken away.
Ah i see, i was reading fast earlier so i misread
Yea i think csp should just use rebelle one time payment system. So every major version can be bought one time and get the minor version upgrade also until another major version is up and need to buy one time payment again for that next major version.
This csp system now if you dont want to subscribe or any upgrade passes, is make a user have to wait until version 3 to buy one time payment to get the full benefit of version 2,1, 2,2, etc. Which is quite a long wait. Csp would advertise on your face all the new features that you have to wait to get. This i think is what csp want so that the users will just want to buy upgrade pass because they cant wait to get all the minor version upgrades.
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yeah that was basically their old payment model.
yep you got it right thats the intention
It’s not as predatory as let say adobe, but i think that despite the best effort of other to explain the new model - whenever they get to the point of explaining the update pass it just all tumble down.
I think the idea of being force to subscribe to get the 2.1 + updates, then once you stop you gone roll back to 2.0 or 1.x , with nothing to show with you paid for all those month before.
There’s not even a timeline for how long you’ll pay the update pass before 3.x arrived.
what if there’s a feature introduce in let say 2.4 that you like but you suddenly dont have the money after 1 year of being in update pass. You now don’t have access to that - with current subs model [im sure this gonna be 5$ / month at minimum]
Would a DLC type be better? have subs for minimal amount and an option to outright purchase the update package with in incremental fee. So each .1 update lets say is 15$ or for a 6months equivalent of subs fee to purchase it.
I think artist in general just don’t want to worry much about maintaining a subs and the stress that if they get late, that a feature they like will no longer be accessible to them.
like if we apply the updates in krita, going to 5.0 means im losing access to Canvas Cursor flip, indentation update → that’s going to drive me nuts. If CSP sub version updates is like that - it gonna be stressful thinking about it while you are subscribe.
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If I would buy version 2.0 on a perpetual license, and then version 2.1 would include a real overhaul to the way text works, I would be very annoyed.
There wasn’t a week were I didn’t see at least one journal, blog or Tweet where artists were recommending CSP and basically advertised it as the savior from Adobes tyrany. Every time there was a sale, artists went around and shared it with their fellow artists. Especially in the amateur and semiprofessional space CSP was seen as the good guys compared to Adobe (i don’t know if CSP was ever officially marketed that way). And now they feel betrayed and stabbed in the back, as the announced business model change shattered their image of CSP’s company.
My point is: the disappointment is partly artist made.
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Exactly, no one is saying that the company isn’t allowed to make money, but the sudden news and subsequent silence on their part really didn’t help clarify things. It was overall a very emotional month for art twitter, what with animations being taken off suddenly from streaming, AI art threatening artists’ jobs, etc. So I don’t blame people for their reactions at all.
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I’m not so sure about that, on CSP and other similar online tools I am able to figure out how to handle models fairly quickly and I don’t struggle, but on blender I don’t know how to do anything in the dense UI it has and it looks very complicated first impression so to me it looks like the learning curve is much steeper there than dragdropping a model in the canvas and discovering how to move the body parts
I don’t know if I’d tell someone to go learn blender just for this, I feel like it’d be more straightforward for all sorts of artists to have a tool included that is simpler to understand and manage
things like magicposer, posemyart and similar web apps seem the second best solution but it would be fantastic to have a plugin inside of krita that does the thing
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Yes it does seem to be the way things are going (or trying to go). Not to sound like a “conspiracy theorist” (and I hate that phrase btw especially when it is applied to everyone just asking questions and being observant about the increasing horror) but I wonder if the AI art thing is connected to it all as well (removing humans from the equation). I’ve read Klaus Schwabs book and it was a pile of garbage, the guy is an insane maniac.
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