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Honestly I would tell people like this screenshotted poster to suck it up or go fuck themselves, because this is free software that is provided for you as is and for use as you wish. If you think the software isn't "adjusted enough" to meet your needs, then place requests for features in the relevant channels, be patient and try to work with the existing tools on offer, or keep shelling out booku bucks for Adobe's continually enshittifying service.
Accept your fate with the corpos instead of bitching that the community effort options aren't in your Goldilocks zone, shitbag.
God, this is why I hated Apple users at my old IT job. They'd bitch about the continually enshittifying status quo of their software and platform, and in the same statement reject all alternatives for not being "a smooth transition".
Edit: on a more positive note, Kritia, FreeCAD, and Kdenlive are all great and multiplatform.
Seriously fuck the boot lickers.
I think this is a needlessly combative stance. If your goal is to get new users to engage with the development side, calling their criticism "bitching" isn't going to do that. Most software users don't have the first clue about software development and wouldn't even know what exactly to say if given a suggestion form. The best feedback a lot of new users can give is "the user experience is clunky and unintuitive".
My stance has been forged by the repeated disappointing interactions that I've had with people who I spend painstaking amounts of time illustrating how to solve their problems with these tools and why a certain design quirk is the way it is vs. the proprietary model.
Without fail, the kinds of users like the screenshotted poster will look at me with a blank face or reply in forum chats with the same statement: "But can't they just make it usable like [enshittified software] instead?"
How can we bridge this gap? At least to the point where users can give constructive feedback like "I wanted to do this thing, and searched for a way here and here. It took me hours to figure out how to do it. It would have been intuitive if..." Maybe we will have to be proactive about UX issues and have proper channels for this information?
I think it's OK to complain about free software on social media. It's also OK to tell people that sometimes, if they want something to be better, they might need to be the ones to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. But not everyone has the time or the technical wherewithal to fix every tool they use. I sure couldn't implement every improvement I ever thought of for free software, I don't have the time.
But I think It's still nice, for maintainers and for people thinking about getting into open source, to get a rolling feel for what gripes a lot of people share about open software. If I have a problem and I know a lot of people share my frustration, I'm much more motivated to try to fix it than if it's something I and no one else care about.
I think it's like complaining about a free product someone made in their own time and then delivered it to your doorstep.
If you don't like it, OK, don't use it. This isn't something you bought. Using the thing doesn't help the dev in any way, unless you also donate or contribute.
We live in a time where private FOSS devs of popular projects get buried under AI slop bug reports from multi-billion-$ corporations who use their work without paying, and death threats on social media if they made an unpopular change to the thing they put out there for free.
That belongs in a feature request though, not on mainstream social media. I'm not going to comb through feeds to try and figure out what bugfixes or features need priority development.
I would even go as so far to say actually placing the request in the proper place matters more than donations.
Inkscape as well
It's not the same, the idea is that you are suggesting things that are not suitable replacements. You can't then say "bUt ItS fReE sOfTwArE" as it that makes it a suitable replacement.
That's the kicker though. The poster framed it as Adobe was the only game in town that was abusing them, a friend told them about a service that was free and had their entire feature set, but it was rejected due to UI and platform concerns.
Not all free software will reach feature or UI parity with their proprietary competition. That's just reality. However, if you are paying a grand total of $0 for the alternative and have no interest in being constructive either through submitting a feature request or contributing code (donating doesn't have an obligation for anything so in this circumstance that wouldn't factor), then you should just either accept the software "as is" (which is a key component of most licenses), or accept that it's not for you.
Stay with the devil that you know if you disregard positioned alternatives for not being "suitable enough", and if you want to change that, be proactive and open-minded. Not bitch.
I read it more as a critique on the self-satisfied recommendation for something that just isn’t the drop in replacement they’re making it out to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I love foss software. 3 out of 4 computers in my household run linux and I‘ve converted a handful of people already.
However, I couldn’t and wouldn’t replace photoshop with gimp/krita, premiere or davinci with kdenlive, etc. for the time being. Not because they’re bad but because I use them professionally and cannot take any risks. Adobe is shit but their software is a known quantity.
Privately, I would never pay for Adobe (not paying anyways, my boss does). And for personal use and maybe smaller (somewhat tech savvy) freelancers, I‘d absolutely recommend everyone at least try the FOSS alternatives.
But, I‘d never go „um akhtshually, foss program xy is just as good as adobe program xy“. Because while they might be as powerful in theory, that doesn’t help if they’re a hurdle to use.
I think this is one thing people who don't make art don't really understand when it comes to making digital art. Changing the program you draw with is sometimes like changing from watercolors to oil paints; the "replacement" just can't do what the artist is using the original for in the first place. It does not matter if it has 80% of the same technical specs if you can't use it for what you are doing
but then.. maybe if the watercolors are making the world worse, it's not really worth using them to make art?
That's a fine, nuanced take. I think the key part is that accepting that you are using a flawed option because it's critical for your employer's standard practices or required for a client's needs (or is the only option that is acceptable to said employer or client) is perfectly fine. You are accepting that the enshittified software is aggravating and not what you'd prefer, but aren't dismissive of alternatives and would consider them if you had the flexibility to.
What I'm trying to poke at here is people finding the "perfect savior" to their existing tools that were made out of choice (that enshittified) or complacency (unwilling to move until they find something that is effectively a reverse engineered clone). Of course, that usually doesn't exist, so they whine about how "FOSS doesn't match everything I want!" despite being capable of learning and not truly bound to their tools by say an employer.
"Hurdle to use" (In my opinion) is just the outcome of being used to the old platform rather than poor design by the developer (even if some FOSS projects may need some UI love).
There are indeed a lot of people who completely dismiss good things because they’re not perfect.
But I‘d argue „hurdle to use“ goes a bit further.
UX is obviously a part of that. It’s the main reason you can’t make me touch gimp, for example.
But, on top of that, a lot of those foss programs require a more involved setup, especially if you want all features to work. Getting hardware de-/encoding to work in kdenlive, for example, isn’t necessarily something everyone can easily do but something that’s absolutely necessary for professional use.
And of course there’s the endless gamble, whether the foss community will happily aid you or curse you, when you’re asking for guidance.
Or if the tutorials and documentation need you to use the terminal for setup or certain features.
Most paid software has both a large community of users (forums, tutorials) and is polished to an extent that every idiot can install and start using it.
That’s what I mean with hurdle. I’m personally tech savvy enough, that I could deal with any problem that might occur, even if I‘m not willing to learn a developer designed UI, but lots of people I know would not.
That’s why, for example, for video editing software, I love to recommend DaVinci resolve. It’s closed source but it’s free, polished n powerful. (And in my humble opinion better that Adobe premiere in every single way). Good software doesn’t have to cost anything, but it also doesn’t always have to be foss either. There’s a middle ground.
I have a hard time taking a rant seriously when it includes such a neologistic gem as ‘booku’.
Apologies - took it from a video that used it to describe a ludicrous amount of money being spent. Same spelling, by the way (from closed captions)
‘Beaucoup’ is the word you were looking for. Although Wiktionary says that ‘bookoo’ and similar spellings are indeed used alternatively, possibly popularised by US soldiers in Vietnam. And, although the French pronunciation is ‘boh-koo’, Louisianan is indeed ‘bookoo’.
So my jab about it being a neologism was inadvertently on the nose, though belated by fifty years.
How old does a word have to be to satisfy you?
“Beaucoup” is like 800 years old. Shitty spelling isn’t a neologism.
Not the lemming you replied to, but I've never seen the word booku before, and had no clue what it meant until your post. Still don't know what beaucoup is doing in an English post but sure
For what it's worth, I've heard this as well, but never seen it spelled before. My grandad and dad used to use it to essentially mean "a ridiculous amount".
It’s a loanword.