FLOSS software and professional use (was "Photoprint")

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2023-04-30 at 09:00 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> 
> At Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:11:56 +0200 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > On Thu, 2023-04-27 at 14:48 -0500, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
> > > Perhaps I misunderstood you - I originally thought you were saying
> > > that FLOSS software in general was inferior to proprietary offerings
> > > by major companies, whereas now I think you are talking specifically
> > > about the realm of desktop publishing and photo manipulation. I still
> > > don't agree, but I also see where I was getting off track.
> > 
> > It's actually quite funny that in the FLOSS realm we're used to two
> > opposite statements.
> > 
> > 1. Be thankful, the FLOSS programmers are not paid.
> > 
> > 2. When it comes to features, everyone is a full professional and knows
> > what they're doing. In such cases, the term "professional" is valued
> > highly.
> 
> It is actually often the case that authors of FLOSS software are actually 
> professional programmers and are in fact being paid (eg they have full time 
> jobs as programmers).  They are *generally* not paid for their FLOSS work, but 
> some actually are -- RedHat, Intel, and others have staff programmers that 
> work on the Linux kernel and other Linux FLOSS software.  

Hi,

we all know the domains of their professional work. With a few
exceptions it's not artwork, neither music, nor drawing, photography or
film. There are a few outstanding exceptions, but those usually also run
on other operating systems that provide a complete platform with way
more supplementary software.

Just one example. Ardour is programmed by a professional and it is
professional audio software.

"[snip] Hundreds of no-cost plugins in LV2, native VST and AudioUnit
formats on all platforms. On Linux install LV2 plugins with your system
software manager.

AudioUnit (AU) plugin support on OS X, allowing use of all effects and
instruments plugins from Waves, u-he, iZotope, PSP, Stillwell and many,
many other plugin manufacturers. [snip]" -
https://ardour.org/features.html

Depending on your work you can use Ardour on Linux, but on OS X you
probably have more options.

For good reasons I'm running Linux on my desktop PC, but for other good
reasons I don't use Linux exclusively.

I've got guitars from different companies. I've got domestic appliances
from different vendors and I'm using different operating systems.

Btw. I need to compile the NIC module for my Linux, I doubt somebody
using a Microsoft or Apple operating system needs to do this, too. For
BSD and Linux power users it's no big deal, for Jane Doe it's impossible
to do this.

My point isn't that Linux is bad. Linux is very good, but I'm firmly
convinced that it's sometimes better to use another operating system for
some domains instead of spending days with getting partly baked software
to run. 

Regards,
Ralf