My point is that the GIMP did improve on Photoshop. Not in any way that I'd call innovative, because it doesn't use any UI features that hadn't been previously invented, but it did apply UI techniques that Photoshop doesn't use and could benefit from, so your assertion that it is a "bad copy" that "fails to imitate..., much less improve" is false.
I was talking about the app as a whole, not the UI alone. The UI does not make up for the lack of professional features. So, it remains a bad copy. If they has managed to implement important PS features like CMYK support and 16-bit image support - then it might begin to be a good copy. But they couldn't even copy some very important parts of Photoshop. Having a better interface isn't going to help me when I need to edit those images. So, tell me - how has it successfully copied Photoshop?
Welll, a commercial flight simulator is a pretty darn immersive environment. And it seems things like Second Life and World of Warcraft must also be very immersive, if so many people get lost in the game to the detriment of their "first life".
I think you're defining VR very narrowly. It's kind of like saying "the internet" consists only of USENET, and then declaring the internet dead based on the declining number of active USENET posters. Things always move on from their early incarnations. Our mobile phones don't look much like telegraph systems, and our digital cameras don't look much like the first pinhole cameras - but they belong to the same field.
If you refuse to adopt FOSS code, note that one of the first things you'll have to do is remove all the TCP/IP and other Internet protocol code from your machines.
What?!? Since when did I say anything about "refusing to adopt FOSS code"? That's ludicrous.
My question was about the software the average user interacts with. If FOSS has such low barriers to entry, then why do most people run MS Office, and not Open Office? It's a pretty straightforward question, but nobody has bothered to answer it yet, instead going off on all kinds of tangents.
Somehow, the claim that the Internet and the Web weren't innovative is, well, astonishing to read.
Where did you read that claim? Because I certainly didn't write it, and I haven't seen it written anywhere in this thread.
And don't try to claim that it was "popular" things like IE that were innovative.
Why would I say something like that? You seem to be having some reading comprehension problems, because I don't know what the hell the things you are arguing have to do with the post you replied to.
Okay, so can you name an example of a proprietary company innovating a new type of software, and along the way voluntarily choosing to establish an open protocol/format that it depends on, to make it easier for other companies to compete with them?
What a silly question. They wouldn't do it specifically to "make it easier for the competition" - they do it, because they have to do it to survive. If they stay proprietary, they will likely have their lunch eaten eventually. Companies adopt open standards to compete better, not to be less competitive.
Sigh. If you actually read the thread, I was rebutting someone's argument about widespread adoption of FOSS. I wasn't talking about innovation in that reply. Merely discussing "barriers to entry" and adoption rates. Interesting how nobody is taking issue with the guy I responded to and his list of FOSS software titles, none of which are innovative, and are pretty much all clones.
That's not the question at hand. The question is: are they innovative?
I agree - that's the overall question of the article. But I was specifically responding to someone who said that FOSS is good because it has low barriers to adoption. I just asked if the barriers are so low, then why are people using proprietary software more widely, if it has higher barriers? I also asked for clarification on the nature of those barriers.
Making music "easy" isn't an innovation. Making documents "portable" is hardly an innovation, and it was done way before Acrobat.
Well, it's a good thing that I never said Acrobat was innovative, huh? Have you even been following the thread? I gave it as an example of something that is widely used, not something that is innovative.
As far as innnovation goes how about the whole WIMP/GUI interface paradigm? That was certainly not the result of open source, and it forms the entire basis of how we interact with computers today. I'd go as far to say that a significant proportion of the "FOSS people" were actively opposed to, or dismissive of the GUI in the early days. You know, "real men use a command line" and all that.
Even then, a lot of the most innovative research in applications like Photoshop is actually grounded in Open Source anyway.
Absolute horseshit. Adobe Photoshop was a totally original application, not "based on" Open Source in any way. I'm not saying it's innovative because it's dominant - I'm saying it's innovative, because it got there first, and changed the whole way we work with images. It transformed entire industries.
Often, when there is innovation in closed-source software, it has nothing to do with the development model at all -- the company is founded BECAUSE of the innovation. You have a clever idea, and you make a company to try and get rich off of it.
So, you're saying there's a link between profit-seeking and creativity? That would imply that most FOSS developers don't have ideas worth any money.
Just because most of those people choose closed source models doesn't causally link either development style with innovation of any kind.
Indeed. But people around here are saying that FOSS is some sort of unique fountainhead of creativity and innovation. I was pointing out how this idea conflicts with reality, and trying to rebut the idea of FOSS causing innovation.
No, I'm not. The contribution of Mosaic itself was not large. The underlying protocols were. It's not such a great example of innovative software as of the ideas that belie it.
And again, you are just using one example, where proprietary software has influenced so many more fields. You seem to be moving the goalposts by ignoring the majority of my comments.
Name a couple. I have no idea what you have in mind.
Do you really need examples? ASCII and JPEG are probably the most widely used, along with protocols such as TCP/IP.
Try following the link I posted. Lyx is a GUI "document processor" that uses LaTex as the back-end: it encourages the author of documents to focus on structure rather than formatting. It's the precise opposite of WYSIWYG, but arguably it's much more efficient for dealing with large-scale projects.
Well, I use LaTex, but I use a TeXShop as the front end. What makes Lyx more innovative? As far as I can see, 99% of the innovation is in the TeX format and protocols, not the GUI used to invoke it.
It has, however, not Taken The World By Storm. Do we infer from that that it is not innovative or useful?
Well, I don't infer any of that. I find LaTeX to be both innovative and useful. But I don't see what this has to do with the questions at hand.
Or do we infer from that that it is difficult to Take The World By Storm without a large marketing budget? Are we arguing about the virtues of openness, or the fact that most people are sheep?
These are bullshit questions. Just because LaTex isn't popular, doesn't mean that people are sheep, or the only way to popularity is through marketing budgets. I've tried to evangelize LaTex - the problem is, it just doesn't suit most people's needs. It fulfills a niche market. I wish more people would use it.
Again, it's a matter of execution. Even among the audience that does use LaTex, it has major drawbacks. Having to use escape characters for very common printed characters would be the biggest drawback. With more refinement and polishing, it could have done very well. As great a concept as it is, some very unfortunate decisions were made in its implementation.
As for marketing budgets, companies have been known to spend millions on marketing, and fail - because of better products that have little or no marketing budget. You don't need a lot of money to succeed if you have something that people want. Word of mouth is often enough.
And my argument is that emacs was a tremendously influential piece of software, which introduced many, many, ideas we now take for granted in all desktop software, and you -- like most people -- are simply ignorant of the history of these things.
Get of your high horse. I know plenty about the history of things. Exactly what wouldn't we have today in desktop software without emacs? I also never said it wasn't influential. But you seem to be determined to hang your argument on a very few examples.
Anyone who looked at it immediately Got The Idea. That's how we got to where we are today: Mosaic -> Mozilla -> Netscape -> Mozilla -> Firefox.
Right. I remember being impressed by Mosaic when I saw it. But I'm not sure how this rebuts the argument that there are more examples of innovation in proprietary software. I never said there wasn't influential and innovative open source software. But again, the underlying protocols are more important. If Open Source was so important to the development of the web, then why are there so many proprietary browsers which take advantage of open protocols? Why did we go through such an extended, painful period where proprietary browsers ruled the internet?
And secondly, I can't imagine why in the context of this discussion we should care about a distinction between open protocols and open source software
Why not? Because they are completely different things! I mean, shit.
certainly a desktop user isn't going to care.
Now this is simply unbelievable. What use does the average user have for the source code of an application? Absolutely none, whatsoever. But if said user finds they can't load their image file, their music, or their text file into their fa
The original idea was published in a free and open manner, which made it possible for people to create multiple implementations of it, whether closed source or not. You're getting hung up on semantic games here.
No, I'm not. Open standards and protocols are very different to Open Source software. Proprietary software has been using open standards for a very long time. There's nothing that makes open standards the exclusive domain of Open Source Software.
In fact, I believe open standards, formats and protocols are much more significant than Open Source software. It doesn't matter so much if a particular application's code is available or not - what matters is interoperability.
You will no doubt object that Lyx has not taken the world by storm, but what does that have to do with whether or not it was innovative?
Nothing. Not having used Lyx, I couldn't judge how innovative it is, though.
Developing a new idea, and selling people on are two different things, though unfortunately Jaron Lanier seems to have conflated the two.
I don't think he has, if you read the article. Regardless, innovation doesn't mean much if nobody uses it. A small innovation that is widely adopted has a lot more influence than a radical innovation that never gets used. This can be sad, but it's true. I lament innovative things that have fallen by the wayside. But that's life.
I think you may also overestimate the "selling" (as in marketing) - just as important is refinement into a working product. There have been many brilliant ideas, that just weren't worked on hard enough to refine into a polished product.
It's hard for me to see this as a demonstration of the inherent futility of developing software like emacs.
I never said there is any futility to it. My argument is that Open Source has been a relatively minor contributor to creativity and innovation in software. The vast bulk of it is just imitation of proprietary software. Innovative Open Source exists, but it isn't as common as innovative closed-source software. That may change in the future.
And the objection that we can "only name a handful" of successful, creative pieces of open source software is truly inane. The web browser has transformed western civilization, and every web browser is essentially a clone of the original Mosaic. Responding to that example with a "well okay, that's one" is just crazy
Yes, but that transformation is not dependent on the open source nature of the browser. What's more significant is the open nature of the underlying protocols and concepts.
u sincerely think that the iPhone is a historic event on the level of the development of the web browser?
Seeing as I never made that argument, no I don't. But it is an innovative phone/pda because of the multi-touch interface. I'd never say it was world-changing though. But again, this comes back to thoroughness in product design. The iPod was a fairly innovative design, but not revolutionary. It changed the world because it worked so effortlessly compared to the competition. That's probably a better example than the iPhone. But it's more about execution than revolution. Which is probably why FOSS has yet contributed little to innovation in desktop software.
But the difference in the GIMP interface is not the result of creativity. If the GIMP interface used some sort of amazing new interface paradigm, then you might have a point. But it doesn't.
Where does that say anything about the GIMP being inferior? All I am doing is referring to the creative/innovative aspects of the GIMP. I even said that the GIMP could be more widely used than Photoshop if it had a more innovative interface. All I was saying is that it is a copy of Photoshop. That's indisputable.
All of them? Has there been a poll done to find out why people use the GIMP - for example, because they like the UI, or because it's free?
The people who don't like it are those who have invested a lot of time in learning the Photoshop UI.
I'm sure there are also people who haven't invested any time in learning Photoshop's UI, but still don't like the GIMP's.
PS is more productive in spite of the inferior UI
Got any usability studies which show Photoshop to have an inferior UI?
Again, what does any of this have to do with innovation? Why was the GIMP cited as being an innovative application in this thread, when it is clearly just a copy?
Just to clarify: The protocol of bittorrent was published before the "official" client. So, why would subsequent implementations depend on the client, when anybody could implement the protocol without referring to the official client software at all? The innovation was in the protocol, not the client.
No, the innovation is in the protocol, not the program used to implement it. What was innovative about the original bittorrent client apart from the protocol it implemented? This is like saying that Internet Explorer is innovative, rather than the internet or the protocols it uses being innovative. There is almost nothing new about the programming of bittorrent clients, they are essentially the same as Napster clients in operation. The creativity is in the protocol that underlies them.
This is extremely obvious, I'm not sure why you're going down this path of proclaiming the application itself, rather than where credit is due in the interesting protocol it supports.
Do you not even remember what you wrote? Here it is:
The F/OSS software I tend to use differentiates itself by simply doing what I need it to do and nothing else. It doesn't "phone home", sacrifice performance for bling, limit important features to a higher-cost "pro" version, store data in undocumented formats, or require re-activation every X months. THAT certainly differentiates F/OSS to me.
You clearly state that FOSS is different from commercial software, because it doesn't do certain things. But the problem is, not all commercial software does those things. So, how can FOSS differentiate itself as a category, when there is commercial software available that meets your stated criteria?
What's the story? Did you not actually mean to write what you wrote? Or are you having a hard time conveying what you mean?
A straightforward reading of your post gives the message that all commercial software does those bad things, while FOSS does not. So, do you admit that all commercial software is not how you describe it, ot not?
Wow, I can't even imagine how you possibly read that from my response, which was actually that F/OSS does indeed differentiate itself. Since you are inventing an argument to respond to, there's not much point continuing this.
Simply mindblowing. I logically respond to what you wrote, and you think I'm inventing arguments? I guess this is fairly typical around here - when confronted with a logical argument that doesn't agree, run away and pretend you didn't argue what you did.
If they are clones of "the original program", then why do they have different features and ways of doing things? Perhaps what you mean is that they are implementations of the same protocol? As I said before, protocols and standards are very different things than application software.
Good for you - but in what way is it creative or innovative? There's also a flaw in "the GIMP developers think so" argument - because it matters more what the users think. Sure, that often overlaps, but most software has more users than developers.
I don't "believe" it, I've experienced it. I've installed commercial apps whose license managers barfed long after the fact, I've seen numerous examples of "phoning home", etc.
Right. I never said that some companies don't do this. But you implied that ALL commercial software is like this, which it clearly isn't. I use plenty of commercial software, and almost all of it doesn't do this kind of thing.
Your argument is pretty lame - that because there are some bad commercial vendors, then all commercial software should be avoided. Let's turn that around. Should all FOSS be avoided because there are bad FOSS titles? Most people with any experience do research on their software, and pick the good ones.
I used to use a commercial stack in the early to mid 90's, mainly Borland C++, MS Visual Studio, WordPerfect, MS Office (especially Excel and Access), IBM DB2, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, and the occasional vertical-market package like AutoCAD and Remedy, all running on Windows of course.
Interesting how you don't cite any small, independent commercial software developers there. Or do independent commercial software developers not count as commercial or proprietary?
In 1999 I moved to a Linux desktop as my primary desktop, and I haven't regretted it.
Good for you. But why did you fabricate this fantasy where all proprietary developers are out to get you, and promote "bling" and bloat over functionality? It's a wide market out there, and plenty of developers compete on their ethical integrity and the performance and reliability of their products.
That only opts out of tracking from your web-browser, not the applications being discussed here. How is setting a cookie in your browser going to stop Adobe products or iTunes from being tracked?
PS is more like a rented flat : nice view, good furnitures, central heating, but if your landlord happens to be a complete moron, and suddenly decides to lock all the doors at 9 pm, you're fscked, and either you're in by the curfew, or you're homeless for the night.
What? Please explain to me how Adobe could suddenly stop me from running Photoshop.
There you go again, proving the point of the other poster. Rinse, lather, repeat. I wonder how you expect FOSS to progress with this attitude? Perhaps you don't, but we get so many people telling us here that FOSS is all we need, it's about to take over the desktop, and we're wrong if we don't use it.
Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functions? I don't think so. Anyway, why choose Pixelmator specifically, when reviews generally have it pegged at the lower end of the new Core Image based editors - and instead recommend a couple of others above it?
Right, you only list a handful. Only two of them are actual desktop productivity software, and only one is widely used. The rest are back-end stuff, and a protocol. The bittorent applications that people actualy use are often closed-source. I'm not sure by what definition bittorrent itself is an "application."
Firefox is the only one that is widely seen by end users. Poen Office is not widely used. Or perhaps your fingers are too tired to type out the names of the FOSS applications that are used as much as Microsoft Office, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat by the average user?
Slashdot Mirror
I was talking about the app as a whole, not the UI alone. The UI does not make up for the lack of professional features. So, it remains a bad copy. If they has managed to implement important PS features like CMYK support and 16-bit image support - then it might begin to be a good copy. But they couldn't even copy some very important parts of Photoshop. Having a better interface isn't going to help me when I need to edit those images. So, tell me - how has it successfully copied Photoshop?
Welll, a commercial flight simulator is a pretty darn immersive environment. And it seems things like Second Life and World of Warcraft must also be very immersive, if so many people get lost in the game to the detriment of their "first life".
I think you're defining VR very narrowly. It's kind of like saying "the internet" consists only of USENET, and then declaring the internet dead based on the declining number of active USENET posters. Things always move on from their early incarnations. Our mobile phones don't look much like telegraph systems, and our digital cameras don't look much like the first pinhole cameras - but they belong to the same field.
What?!? Since when did I say anything about "refusing to adopt FOSS code"? That's ludicrous.
My question was about the software the average user interacts with. If FOSS has such low barriers to entry, then why do most people run MS Office, and not Open Office? It's a pretty straightforward question, but nobody has bothered to answer it yet, instead going off on all kinds of tangents.
Somehow, the claim that the Internet and the Web weren't innovative is, well, astonishing to read.Where did you read that claim? Because I certainly didn't write it, and I haven't seen it written anywhere in this thread.
And don't try to claim that it was "popular" things like IE that were innovative.Why would I say something like that? You seem to be having some reading comprehension problems, because I don't know what the hell the things you are arguing have to do with the post you replied to.
What a silly question. They wouldn't do it specifically to "make it easier for the competition" - they do it, because they have to do it to survive. If they stay proprietary, they will likely have their lunch eaten eventually. Companies adopt open standards to compete better, not to be less competitive.
Sigh. If you actually read the thread, I was rebutting someone's argument about widespread adoption of FOSS. I wasn't talking about innovation in that reply. Merely discussing "barriers to entry" and adoption rates. Interesting how nobody is taking issue with the guy I responded to and his list of FOSS software titles, none of which are innovative, and are pretty much all clones.
I agree - that's the overall question of the article. But I was specifically responding to someone who said that FOSS is good because it has low barriers to adoption. I just asked if the barriers are so low, then why are people using proprietary software more widely, if it has higher barriers? I also asked for clarification on the nature of those barriers.
Making music "easy" isn't an innovation. Making documents "portable" is hardly an innovation, and it was done way before Acrobat.Well, it's a good thing that I never said Acrobat was innovative, huh? Have you even been following the thread? I gave it as an example of something that is widely used, not something that is innovative.
As far as innnovation goes how about the whole WIMP/GUI interface paradigm? That was certainly not the result of open source, and it forms the entire basis of how we interact with computers today. I'd go as far to say that a significant proportion of the "FOSS people" were actively opposed to, or dismissive of the GUI in the early days. You know, "real men use a command line" and all that.
Even then, a lot of the most innovative research in applications like Photoshop is actually grounded in Open Source anyway.Absolute horseshit. Adobe Photoshop was a totally original application, not "based on" Open Source in any way. I'm not saying it's innovative because it's dominant - I'm saying it's innovative, because it got there first, and changed the whole way we work with images. It transformed entire industries.
Often, when there is innovation in closed-source software, it has nothing to do with the development model at all -- the company is founded BECAUSE of the innovation. You have a clever idea, and you make a company to try and get rich off of it.So, you're saying there's a link between profit-seeking and creativity? That would imply that most FOSS developers don't have ideas worth any money.
Just because most of those people choose closed source models doesn't causally link either development style with innovation of any kind.Indeed. But people around here are saying that FOSS is some sort of unique fountainhead of creativity and innovation. I was pointing out how this idea conflicts with reality, and trying to rebut the idea of FOSS causing innovation.
No, I'm not. The contribution of Mosaic itself was not large. The underlying protocols were. It's not such a great example of innovative software as of the ideas that belie it.
And again, you are just using one example, where proprietary software has influenced so many more fields. You seem to be moving the goalposts by ignoring the majority of my comments.
Name a couple. I have no idea what you have in mind.
Do you really need examples? ASCII and JPEG are probably the most widely used, along with protocols such as TCP/IP.
Try following the link I posted. Lyx is a GUI "document processor" that uses LaTex as the back-end: it encourages the author of documents to focus on structure rather than formatting. It's the precise opposite of WYSIWYG, but arguably it's much more efficient for dealing with large-scale projects.
Well, I use LaTex, but I use a TeXShop as the front end. What makes Lyx more innovative? As far as I can see, 99% of the innovation is in the TeX format and protocols, not the GUI used to invoke it.
It has, however, not Taken The World By Storm. Do we infer from that that it is not innovative or useful?
Well, I don't infer any of that. I find LaTeX to be both innovative and useful. But I don't see what this has to do with the questions at hand.
Or do we infer from that that it is difficult to Take The World By Storm without a large marketing budget? Are we arguing about the virtues of openness, or the fact that most people are sheep?
These are bullshit questions. Just because LaTex isn't popular, doesn't mean that people are sheep, or the only way to popularity is through marketing budgets. I've tried to evangelize LaTex - the problem is, it just doesn't suit most people's needs. It fulfills a niche market. I wish more people would use it.
Again, it's a matter of execution. Even among the audience that does use LaTex, it has major drawbacks. Having to use escape characters for very common printed characters would be the biggest drawback. With more refinement and polishing, it could have done very well. As great a concept as it is, some very unfortunate decisions were made in its implementation.
As for marketing budgets, companies have been known to spend millions on marketing, and fail - because of better products that have little or no marketing budget. You don't need a lot of money to succeed if you have something that people want. Word of mouth is often enough.
And my argument is that emacs was a tremendously influential piece of software, which introduced many, many, ideas we now take for granted in all desktop software, and you -- like most people -- are simply ignorant of the history of these things.
Get of your high horse. I know plenty about the history of things. Exactly what wouldn't we have today in desktop software without emacs? I also never said it wasn't influential. But you seem to be determined to hang your argument on a very few examples.
Anyone who looked at it immediately Got The Idea. That's how we got to where we are today: Mosaic -> Mozilla -> Netscape -> Mozilla -> Firefox.
Right. I remember being impressed by Mosaic when I saw it. But I'm not sure how this rebuts the argument that there are more examples of innovation in proprietary software. I never said there wasn't influential and innovative open source software. But again, the underlying protocols are more important. If Open Source was so important to the development of the web, then why are there so many proprietary browsers which take advantage of open protocols? Why did we go through such an extended, painful period where proprietary browsers ruled the internet?
And secondly, I can't imagine why in the context of this discussion we should care about a distinction between open protocols and open source software
Why not? Because they are completely different things! I mean, shit.
certainly a desktop user isn't going to care.
Now this is simply unbelievable. What use does the average user have for the source code of an application? Absolutely none, whatsoever. But if said user finds they can't load their image file, their music, or their text file into their fa
No, I'm not. Open standards and protocols are very different to Open Source software. Proprietary software has been using open standards for a very long time. There's nothing that makes open standards the exclusive domain of Open Source Software.
In fact, I believe open standards, formats and protocols are much more significant than Open Source software. It doesn't matter so much if a particular application's code is available or not - what matters is interoperability.
You will no doubt object that Lyx has not taken the world by storm, but what does that have to do with whether or not it was innovative?Nothing. Not having used Lyx, I couldn't judge how innovative it is, though.
Developing a new idea, and selling people on are two different things, though unfortunately Jaron Lanier seems to have conflated the two.I don't think he has, if you read the article. Regardless, innovation doesn't mean much if nobody uses it. A small innovation that is widely adopted has a lot more influence than a radical innovation that never gets used. This can be sad, but it's true. I lament innovative things that have fallen by the wayside. But that's life.
I think you may also overestimate the "selling" (as in marketing) - just as important is refinement into a working product. There have been many brilliant ideas, that just weren't worked on hard enough to refine into a polished product.
It's hard for me to see this as a demonstration of the inherent futility of developing software like emacs.I never said there is any futility to it. My argument is that Open Source has been a relatively minor contributor to creativity and innovation in software. The vast bulk of it is just imitation of proprietary software. Innovative Open Source exists, but it isn't as common as innovative closed-source software. That may change in the future.
And the objection that we can "only name a handful" of successful, creative pieces of open source software is truly inane. The web browser has transformed western civilization, and every web browser is essentially a clone of the original Mosaic. Responding to that example with a "well okay, that's one" is just crazyYes, but that transformation is not dependent on the open source nature of the browser. What's more significant is the open nature of the underlying protocols and concepts.
u sincerely think that the iPhone is a historic event on the level of the development of the web browser?Seeing as I never made that argument, no I don't. But it is an innovative phone/pda because of the multi-touch interface. I'd never say it was world-changing though. But again, this comes back to thoroughness in product design. The iPod was a fairly innovative design, but not revolutionary. It changed the world because it worked so effortlessly compared to the competition. That's probably a better example than the iPhone. But it's more about execution than revolution. Which is probably why FOSS has yet contributed little to innovation in desktop software.
No, I didn't. This is what I said:
But the difference in the GIMP interface is not the result of creativity. If the GIMP interface used some sort of amazing new interface paradigm, then you might have a point. But it doesn't.Where does that say anything about the GIMP being inferior? All I am doing is referring to the creative/innovative aspects of the GIMP. I even said that the GIMP could be more widely used than Photoshop if it had a more innovative interface. All I was saying is that it is a copy of Photoshop. That's indisputable.
All of them? Has there been a poll done to find out why people use the GIMP - for example, because they like the UI, or because it's free?
The people who don't like it are those who have invested a lot of time in learning the Photoshop UI.I'm sure there are also people who haven't invested any time in learning Photoshop's UI, but still don't like the GIMP's.
PS is more productive in spite of the inferior UIGot any usability studies which show Photoshop to have an inferior UI?
Again, what does any of this have to do with innovation? Why was the GIMP cited as being an innovative application in this thread, when it is clearly just a copy?
Right, so what does it being better for you have to do with the subject of the thread, which is innovation?
Just to clarify: The protocol of bittorrent was published before the "official" client. So, why would subsequent implementations depend on the client, when anybody could implement the protocol without referring to the official client software at all? The innovation was in the protocol, not the client.
No, the innovation is in the protocol, not the program used to implement it. What was innovative about the original bittorrent client apart from the protocol it implemented? This is like saying that Internet Explorer is innovative, rather than the internet or the protocols it uses being innovative. There is almost nothing new about the programming of bittorrent clients, they are essentially the same as Napster clients in operation. The creativity is in the protocol that underlies them.
This is extremely obvious, I'm not sure why you're going down this path of proclaiming the application itself, rather than where credit is due in the interesting protocol it supports.
Do you not even remember what you wrote? Here it is:
The F/OSS software I tend to use differentiates itself by simply doing what I need it to do and nothing else. It doesn't "phone home", sacrifice performance for bling, limit important features to a higher-cost "pro" version, store data in undocumented formats, or require re-activation every X months. THAT certainly differentiates F/OSS to me.You clearly state that FOSS is different from commercial software, because it doesn't do certain things. But the problem is, not all commercial software does those things. So, how can FOSS differentiate itself as a category, when there is commercial software available that meets your stated criteria?
What's the story? Did you not actually mean to write what you wrote? Or are you having a hard time conveying what you mean?
A straightforward reading of your post gives the message that all commercial software does those bad things, while FOSS does not. So, do you admit that all commercial software is not how you describe it, ot not?
Wow, I can't even imagine how you possibly read that from my response, which was actually that F/OSS does indeed differentiate itself. Since you are inventing an argument to respond to, there's not much point continuing this.Simply mindblowing. I logically respond to what you wrote, and you think I'm inventing arguments? I guess this is fairly typical around here - when confronted with a logical argument that doesn't agree, run away and pretend you didn't argue what you did.
If they are clones of "the original program", then why do they have different features and ways of doing things? Perhaps what you mean is that they are implementations of the same protocol? As I said before, protocols and standards are very different things than application software.
I dunno, the wheel seems very intuitive and practical.
Good for you - but in what way is it creative or innovative? There's also a flaw in "the GIMP developers think so" argument - because it matters more what the users think. Sure, that often overlaps, but most software has more users than developers.
Right. I never said that some companies don't do this. But you implied that ALL commercial software is like this, which it clearly isn't. I use plenty of commercial software, and almost all of it doesn't do this kind of thing.
Your argument is pretty lame - that because there are some bad commercial vendors, then all commercial software should be avoided. Let's turn that around. Should all FOSS be avoided because there are bad FOSS titles? Most people with any experience do research on their software, and pick the good ones.
I used to use a commercial stack in the early to mid 90's, mainly Borland C++, MS Visual Studio, WordPerfect, MS Office (especially Excel and Access), IBM DB2, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, and the occasional vertical-market package like AutoCAD and Remedy, all running on Windows of course.Interesting how you don't cite any small, independent commercial software developers there. Or do independent commercial software developers not count as commercial or proprietary?
In 1999 I moved to a Linux desktop as my primary desktop, and I haven't regretted it.Good for you. But why did you fabricate this fantasy where all proprietary developers are out to get you, and promote "bling" and bloat over functionality? It's a wide market out there, and plenty of developers compete on their ethical integrity and the performance and reliability of their products.
That only opts out of tracking from your web-browser, not the applications being discussed here. How is setting a cookie in your browser going to stop Adobe products or iTunes from being tracked?
What? Please explain to me how Adobe could suddenly stop me from running Photoshop.
There you go again, proving the point of the other poster. Rinse, lather, repeat. I wonder how you expect FOSS to progress with this attitude? Perhaps you don't, but we get so many people telling us here that FOSS is all we need, it's about to take over the desktop, and we're wrong if we don't use it.
Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functions? I don't think so. Anyway, why choose Pixelmator specifically, when reviews generally have it pegged at the lower end of the new Core Image based editors - and instead recommend a couple of others above it?
Right, you only list a handful. Only two of them are actual desktop productivity software, and only one is widely used. The rest are back-end stuff, and a protocol. The bittorent applications that people actualy use are often closed-source. I'm not sure by what definition bittorrent itself is an "application."
Firefox is the only one that is widely seen by end users. Poen Office is not widely used. Or perhaps your fingers are too tired to type out the names of the FOSS applications that are used as much as Microsoft Office, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat by the average user?
Absolutely.