Posted about PL on Affinity Photo Reddit.

[Herbert123]

And who exactly will pay the developers of PL? Who exactly will pay their retirement?

You forgot to mention Cinema 4D. It is the world's leading 3D development program.
The same is true for Rhino 3D, which is the leading software for 3D CAD.

Blender etc. is for people who don't want to pay anything or just have everything for free.
Remember, there is no free lunch.

If talking about pure monetary exchanges: Blender, Krita, OpenToonz, Inkscape, Visual Studio Code, Godot, ... can all be downloaded for free.

Cinema4D isn't the world's leading 3D package, nor is Rhino 3D the leading software for 3D CAD. It all depends on the context and particular industry. C4D may be very popular in motion graphics circles, but isn't popular in game design and development (Blender is). Maya is the favourite in 3d character animation. Max still very much a popular choice for architectural previz and Houdini is the absolute king in cinematic 3d visual effects.

If anything Blender is the most popular 3d software by far with a huge community of users.

Those are managed/headed by more centralized teams, and it worked in their favour.

Please be so kind and publish valid data on how much income the developers of freeware generate with their effort.

You asked!

2024-11-28 15_40_06-#1.png

2024-11-28 15_49_35-#1.jpg

Reference: https://www.blender.org/press/blender-f ... port-2023/

Also of interest:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... =de&tz=-60

And btw, my initial thinking behind open-sourcing PhotoLine was that at some point the Hubers will probably want to enjoy their golden years, and there is a risk that PhotoLine will be discontinued when (not if!) the Hubers stop working on it. I have seen this happen before: either the software is sold off to a third party by the original developers to another company which then discontinues or wrecks it because there is no vision/passion behind the acquisition, or the software is discontinued or perhaps the final executable is gifted to the public domain and development stops.

If the Hubers set up a non-profit, and take the lead (just like Ton Roosendaal) in open sourcing PhotoLine they could slowly reduce their part, and still ensure a lasting legacy, while PhotoLine will see continued development. And I am sure quite a few developers will flock to such a project - in particular for Linux, which still hasn't got a decent image editor (Gimp doesn't but it!).

In short: I would like to see PhotoLine last and be supported and improved for many years to come

[der_fotograf]

I've asked for the income of the developers, not gross income of a corporation or »Fund Patron«.

Example: The line »Developer Salaries Staff« doesn't say anything. How many developers – 200, 100, 50, or less?

This is a typical reply in a blahblah forum without answering the question.

[Herbert123]

I've asked for the income of the developers, not gross income of a corporation or »Fund Patron«.

Example: The line »Developer Salaries Staff« doesn't say anything. How many developers – 200, 100, 50, or less?

This is a typical reply in a blahblah forum without answering the question.

Apologies: you did not ask for specific individual developer salaries or wages. You asked for this:

Please be so kind and publish valid data on how much income the developers of freeware generate with their effort.

Your statement is phrased --to me-- as how much income the developers (as in: all developers of a freeware --and open source is not the same as freeware, btw) in overall have earned - a total, not individual salaries. Like in the development operation as a whole of a software product.

You asked for data. I provided it. You asked for the income of multiple developers (which is easily understood as the income data for the entire development staff). I provided that information.

All information that is available and accessible to the public.

If you wanted specific incomes of specific individual developers: that is not how your phrased your query. I am NOT bypassing your question.

Also: you are now moving the goal posts. The point of all of this was to provide you with proof that running an open source project could provide in a viable revenue to support an entire team of people and support development.
And that according to you only a commercial product would guarantee a stable, smooth operation (use) and continuous development. I have provided more than sufficient proof that that just isn't true in the real world.

Besides, if the developers felt they weren't paid fairly, they would just leave.

Here is a list of people working at the Blender Institute:

https://www.blender.org/about/people/

Currently 23 developers work at HQ and remotely. Back in Feb 2023 around 12/13 worked there.

Reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20230228213 ... ut/people/

Let's take the difference of 10: 5 (because towards the end of 2023 more devs were employed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231120183 ... ut/people/

So 17-18 developers: ~60.000 euro per developer. Some of these worked part-time. It is difficult to pin down exact figures and some were senior devs and others engineers. This is all guesstimating things somewhat.

According to https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazin ... age-salary

the average developer salary in the Netherlands in 2023 was 60.000 euro.

Ergo, it can be stated with some certainty that the average developer at the Blender Foundation earned a minimum of the average Dutch wages for an average developer.

Is this precise enough for you?

[LateJunction]

Ah yes, PhotoLine's online (and offline) obscurity... I have done my share of sharing PhotoLine's benefits throughout the years on forums, demoing to students and other designers, rewriting the English PhotoLine Wiki (last June), and so on.

Hi Herbert123.

I’m here because of you and your tremendous efforts to promote PhotoLine. Until I stumbled across your posts (at DPReview.com) I had never heard of PhotoLine. This deeply surprised me: I spent the last 3 months of 2019 engaged in an intensive search for a replacement to LightRoom (I had LR 6, the last version before Adobe began its campaign to cheat ‘perpetual’ licensees, like myself). My preference was for a Linux based solution so that I could eventually cease using Windows and all the risk, irritation and frustration that goes with it. At the same time I was also looking to Gimp as a replacement for my Photoshop CS6 – but that was an unfulfilled expectation (*).

To my recollection, during that intense search I saw no reference to PhotoLine irrespective of the OS that applied – especially for Linux. The search led me, finally, to darktable and, for me, a painful 12 month learning curve. It was/is worth it. But I still had to use PS CS6 if I wanted to do any editing beyond the functionality of something like darktable’s Rework module (which, to be fair, is not what the darktable developers are seeking to do with this raw image processor).

The discovery of your reviews and comments on PhotoLine came as a considerable surprise to me. I am even more surprised to share similar reactions to yourself at the functionality of this essentially hidden and secret software. Unlike you, I have decades of learning PS – that is multiple 10s of times of repeated learning, not understanding and forgetting how to use the more powerful functions of PS (blendif for example). So I am not dissuaded by comments that PhotoLine is not an easy learn – for me it cannot be harder than PS. And I have no doubts that it will be a more than adequate replacement for the 5% of a desperately bloated PS that I actually use.

For me, PhotoLine has the overwhelming advantage over PS in that it runs under Linux in Wine, remarkably well. In fact I know of no other application that seems to run as trouble free in Wine – and I have tried many. The performance is impressive: it runs obviously and observably faster on my mid-range desktop Linux Mint computer than does PS CS 6 on my similar Win-10 bloat and spy-ware based Win 10 computer. I can now confidently escape from that awful cess-pit of an advertising system, masquerading as an OS. A double escape: from Adobe and Microsoft. Just in time, given the approaching death of Win 10 service.

I have to thank you and your efforts to preach about PhotoLine for enabling that release.

(*) Not wishing to appear to be negative to the team developing Gimp, but they haven’t managed to escape from their “fusion-energy-promise” (always 30 years away, even after 60 years) in their management of Gimp release 3. And don’t talk to me about the integration with darktable to enable one to open a raw file in Gimp. I even challenged the author of a much publicised set of YouTube videos on Gimp, who claimed such integration was easy to setup, to demonstrate the process in a video. That was a couple of years ago; still waiting. Attempts with the latest, non-flatpack, version of Gimp that I have been able to install in Linux (2.10.38) result in the usual recommendation to install either darktable or rawtherapee, both of which are already installed and functioning well.

In contrast, what appears to be a smaller development team at PL32.com have shipped a much more complete product, which opens raw files natively. And has had a continuous stream of enhancements.