>Pro or against proprietary software, it's a fallacy to assume that in a world where Photoshop didn't exist, its alternatives would be the same. Having a copy of PS for a relatively cheap price is a great incentive not to devote more resources to alternatives.
In principle, yes, it's problematic to assume any alternative reality in which something has changed will otherwise be the same as ours. Things affect each other.
That said, the assumption in this _particular_ case seems like a safe bet to me. For one, Photoshop does not have a "relatively cheap price". It's over $500 dollars by itself, and some thousand dollars with the rest of the suite.
Also note that the people that "have a copy of Photoshop" and need it with all it's power are not the same people that are "devoting more resources to the alternatives". The former are graphic designers and illustrators, where the latter are programmers.
Since most programmers are casual image editing software users, they wouldn't need Photoshop. And indeed, those users get just fine with Gimp. So it's not like if Photoshop wasn't available programmers would have flocked to make an equivalent program.
For one, Photoshop does not have a "relatively cheap price". It's over $500 dollars by itself, and some thousand dollars with the rest of the suite.
A price is only cheap or expensive relatively to something. Compared to the necessary money to improve a free program, $500 is ridiculously cheap. It's also pretty cheap compared to the benefits accrued by most professionals users by using it.
Also note that the people that "have a copy of Photoshop" and need it with all it's power are not the same people that are "devoting more resources to the alternatives". The former are graphic designers and illustrators, where the latter are programmers.
Since most programmers are casual image editing software users, they wouldn't need Photoshop. And indeed, those users get just fine with Gimp. So it's not like if Photoshop wasn't available programmers would have flocked to make an equivalent program.
And exactly why wouldn't designers and illustrators pay (read: devote resources) programmers to improve it, just like they do now?
If your claim is that people don't pay for OSS development, my paycheck says otherwise.
>And exactly why wouldn't designers and illustrators pay (read: devote resources) programmers to improve it, just like they do now? If your claim is that people don't pay for OSS development, my paycheck says otherwise.
No, my claim is that people don't generally pay directly to support OSS development, and never in the scale of supporting huge teams of programmers, equipment, testing, etc like Adobe does.
There are very few examples of people in a field paying directly for OSS programmers to create programs for their profession.
Don't conflate a company paying for OSS software or employing programmers working on OSS (like Sun, Oracle, RedHat, IBM etc), with "people" and specifically graphic professionals paying programmers to create OSS graphic editing programs. (The one counter-example I can think of, Bender, was closed source, and not doing very well financially when people sponsored it's becoming OSS).
Heck, GTK+, the very toolkit used not only by Gimp but by a huge ecosystem of programs, is left with ONE programmer working on it (he posted a complain a few months ago).
In principle, yes, it's problematic to assume any alternative reality in which something has changed will otherwise be the same as ours. Things affect each other.
That said, the assumption in this _particular_ case seems like a safe bet to me. For one, Photoshop does not have a "relatively cheap price". It's over $500 dollars by itself, and some thousand dollars with the rest of the suite.
Also note that the people that "have a copy of Photoshop" and need it with all it's power are not the same people that are "devoting more resources to the alternatives". The former are graphic designers and illustrators, where the latter are programmers.
Since most programmers are casual image editing software users, they wouldn't need Photoshop. And indeed, those users get just fine with Gimp. So it's not like if Photoshop wasn't available programmers would have flocked to make an equivalent program.