this post was submitted on 16 May 2025

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This is Martin Owens. He is a leading developer of Inkscape, a free open-source vector graphics editor. Adobe has lost millions of dollars because of his work. Thank you Martin 🫡 (i.ytimg.com)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Martin believes everyone should have access to free quality software.

Thanks so much🙏

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

And top of the morning to ye!

[–] [email protected] 95 points 3 days ago (26 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

How many of those millions went to his bank account? I'm guessing not many.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

he looks happy and his room looks full of fun

that's worth a million dollars if you ask me

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

bowler hat
face that works with a bowler hat
window with view of nature
healthy looking indoor plant
awesome book collection
sweater of medical higher education he is obviously proud about.
intact and healthy conscious (presumably)

This guy is rich as fuck. No wonder the billionaire class is so pissed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

This guy is rich as fuck. No wonder the billionaire class is so pissed.

"Oh no! Another rich person!"

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[+] [email protected] -14 points 3 days ago (9 children)

Inkscape is still notably worse to use than Affinity Designer, despite having been started more than ten years earlier. Why?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I agree with you but one is a for profit product launched by a company with multiples of employees working full-time and with funding to compete with Adobe.

The other is freeware made by some dude and maybe a few volunteers in their free time out of the goodness of their heart.

You can't really compare the two.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I really do like OSS, but I have to say this train of thought isn't particularly helpful. Especially in professional and prosumer software that just doesn't cut it. If the free version is worse, then it's not the version you want to use. The end reseult ends up being that cheaper but proprietary software like Affinity's suite or DaVinci Resolve catch up, become dominant and the cycle of enshittification starts anew.

Instead of naively making disingenuous arguments about existing alternatives I'd be more concerned with figuring out ways of getting OSS to keep up with the joneses. I'm often less excited about a solo dev doing "freeway out of the kindness of his heart" and more interested in seeing OSS software gather around a foundation scheme with some corporate sponsors, Blender-style

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm often less excited about a solo dev doing "freeway out of the kindness of his heart" and more interested in seeing OSS software gather around a foundation scheme with some corporate sponsors, Blender-style

I don't know much about Blender but if OSS still needs corporate sponsors to stay competitive:

What's the point? Might as well become a for profit company themselves then.
Why would any for profit company sponsor FOSS? They will literally not make profit on it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

Oh, this I like, because I assumed some of this was universally known, but maybe you have to be a bit of a specifically focused nerd.

So for question 1... well, what's the point of doing the work as an individual? The software that comes out of the other end is still free and open source, so people can still get it freely and modify it however they want. And if you have a successful org you may be able to actually pay and hire devs and grow as a company does without requiring constant growth or prioritizing a sellout.

To question number 2... because having standards is good and you still get a bunch of benefits from free alternatives existing. You'd have to ask the specific corporate sponsors, but it's pretty clear why Epic would benefit from a free 3D modelling suite people can use to make Unreal Engine content without them having to build and maintain it. Likewise for Nvidia, which will happily sell you the render processing power for your 3D movie project without having to also give you the tools (or share your budget with a paid software alternative). Other sponsors benefit by selling stuff for use with Blender. 3D scanners, plugins, assets... lots of side markets where people can benefit from everbody having access to the toolset. People who sell tutorials. People who make games and have some budget they'd rather spend here than licensing a hundred seats of paid software...

There are tons of tangible benefits from having a powerful, effective open tool for key tasks that aren't taken advantage of because commerical competitiveness prevents mutual benefit in a bunch of situations. Do you think every artist that is stuck hating Adobe but having to use Photoshop wouldn't prefer having a free, open alternative to the same quality level? And they'd all be more than capable of financing one with a fraction of the cost of PS, I'm sure. It's just hard to coordinate and justify that level of support when your benefits aren't hard revenue pouring in. There are more examples, too. Smart home hardware sellers really DO like Home Assistant providing an inexpensive option for people to plug their devices to without having to pay Google and Apple for the privilege or having to develop an alternative in-house.

The best thing that could happen to open software would be for that pipeline from an obnoxiously overmonized task with no alternatives to a self-sufficient, non-profit-driven open alternative to get refined and standardized. I have very little belief in one-off devs working for nothing and a lot of hope for organizations capable of paying people for their work without having to endlessly prioritize revenue and growth.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Right now, there are 79 people on the Inkscape source code project. One would think that 79 people are more than enough to create a good software in 22 years.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Half of them haven't been active in 2025, and the first active member i clicked on's commit history is "fixed a typo on the website" once this year, and once 6 months ago

It's a shit metric because people spam OSS repos with "minor text fixes" pull requests so they can slap "inkscape contributor" on their CV.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

it's probably more important to consider the time vs numbers of people

if 79 people are in a group but only one person has the final say, everything is bottlenecked until the one person acts

are all 79 actually programming? I suspect there's junior and senior people and probably someone is just watching and learning more than adding

in the business program, it's probably a team working 40+ hour weeks on a schedule with check-ins and team coherence

old small open source projects are not going to be as polished

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sure, 79 people who probably aren't paid who volunteered however many minutes of their free time per week over 22 years (not to mention they may be active anywhere between 0-22 years on the project) vs. 300 full time employees who are salaried and do this day in day out, eight hours a day.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You have the right to have an opinion. Also, your opinion have zero value for others. No argumentation, no reasons, just : inskape is worse than X.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

your opinion have zero value for others

Speak for yourself as it was a valid question from rhabarba.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

You have the right to have an opinion.

Well thank you, that's generous.

Also, your opinion have zero value for others.

Thank you for your valuable opinion about my opinion.

No argumentation, no reasons, just : inskape is worse than X.

Worse to use. The UI is a mess, the application is slow and last time I checked, it crashed more often than not (at least on Windows).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

on Windows

R.I.P. your credibility re: being the arbiter of good, usable software 🤪

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago

I'm very pleased for you that you always have the choice of which operating system you want to work with in your everyday work and private life. This freedom is a luxury that not everyone has.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

are you helping out or just spreading the hate?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago

Inkscape is one of my favorite applications out there. I use it almost daily, both for my day job and hobbies. Thanks Martin!

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