Libre Graphics World

A couple of valuable takeaways from chapter 1 for me:

- Explains what PBD is all about.

- "many mathematicians and physicists think visually and reduce their thoughts to words only reluctantly to communicate with other people". I've found that this holds true for myself as well, both when thinking about maths problems and in thinking about algorithms for my software. This is why I believe in the concept of visual programming.

Several tools made for music production, creation of computer generated imagery and animation base a lot of the workflow around working visually. For example:

* Max, a visual programming language for music and multimedia. https://cycling74.com/products/max/

* Pure Data, an open source visual programming language for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data

* VCV Rack, an open source virtual modular synthesizer. https://vcvrack.com/

* Blender, an open source 3D modeling, animation and rendering program has a material editor where you create a material by routing basic materials through a set of nodes. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/blender_render/materials/nodes/introduction.html

* Nuke, a compositing software that is widely used in the VFX industry, has a node-based workflow. https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/content/getting_started/using_interface/working_nodes.html

* Natron, an open source composting software. Development stopped last year and they are currently in need…

Thanks for your hard work and the clarifications.

Indeed from a 10,000ft view the projects share some good stuff.

As @prokoudine pointed out in his other article [1] (linked at the top of this article), Jonathan Thomas from Openshot will be "100% full time working on OpenShot" in 2019, which is exciting with now both Olive and OpenShot working on making great video editing software.

What are your opinions comparing Olive to OpenShot, maybe more in broader terms (history/goals/manpower/roadmap/pro features coming up/...) instead of current feature comparison, since you guys appear to move very fast (but I also expect OpenShot to do some great stuff too in 2019). You must have surveyed the field before starting and have wonderful insights about the two (also @pedrokost comments regarding problems in OpenShot for bigger projects worries me, and Olive seem to beat Openshot there) and seen some shortcomings to decide to make your own.

Maybe @prokoudine will produce another interesting article about that?

--

[1] http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/the-quest-for-sustainable-free-libre-non-linear-video-editors

I see that on your about page you mention only supporting PDFs.

As somebody frustrated by the lack of alternatives to Autodesk products, seemingly due to the lock in by .DWG files[1] not being an open standard, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts? Did you think about/try implementing the file format? Do you have plans for others?

Last week, I told myself I'd give the OSS CAD programs a try, downloaded LibreCAD and tried to open some architecture plans from my inbox. Could not open. Then I read came across an excellent explanation of the problem of DWGs in OSS[2], this is the most frustrated I've been for a while. The industry standard is a proprietary file format with no published specifications.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwg
[2]: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/whats-up-with-dwg-adoption-in-free-software

Part of that is also down to knowing about competitors and for them to stay alive. For instance, the other day I downloaded from the Mac app store a fork of GIMP from way back called Seashore (that's since been updated and barely any GIMP code survives). I've not had much chance to use it yet but so far it's what it claims to be, simple to use, which is a breath of fresh air after using GIMP. But who knows about it? It's been around for years and I'd not heard about it.

I read an interview with the maintainer[1] and it sounds like he's put in a lot of work but as he says it's a "labour of love". I wish someone was paying him, even surreptitiously!

[1] https://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/meet-seashore-free-image-editor-for-macos

From the linked [0] article, SourceForge was a perfectly viable bussiness before this, if it will continue to be is another matter

"First of all, problems with SourceForge are older than some people might expect. At some point in mid-2000s, SourceForge stopped evolving as fast as it used to and focused on advertising-based revenue. This allowed them to go from $6mln in 2006 to $23mln revenue in 2009. But it also alienated free software developers due to poorer service quality. Various projects started moving away."

[0]http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/anatomy-of-sourceforge-gimp-controversy

The FSF claims to care about EDA, but contributes to the problem by pushing strong copyleft at any cost. Like the time Stallman refused to relicense LibreDWG (GPLv3) so that LibreCAD (GPLv2) could add support for Autodesk DWG files. (http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/whats-up-with-dwg-adoption-in-free-software, http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/libredwg-drama-the-end-or-the-new-beginning)

He cares about his copyleft philosophy and GPL dogma more than the ability of free software to use free software.