Never been a fan of tailwind, but this is kinda sad. Given it's popularity what a sad situation that they aren't getting able to get properly funded.
I think the solution is one of the big companies with lots of money to acquire tailwind. Specifically Vercel. They use it, their v0 thing uses tailwind allover, they have bought a bunch of open source companies in the past, and they should have deep enough pockets. Last year they acquired tremor blocks, which is a UI library, that uses tailwind!
That's neat. Not sure if I would deploy it, as it will be hard to explain/teach people how to use it (as I see in other comments already), but I do see the value in it.
It solves the "drag and drop beyond what fits the screen" much better than you can with drag and drop, the awkward auto-scroll-on-nearing-the-edge-thing.
I would say, if you need to reorder many items, it gets a bit disorienting, the whole list moves as it's anchored to the item you are moving. Maybe there is a way to combine drag and drop where this kicks in if you go beyond the bounds of the visible area.
Also don't think this can work well with multiple axis/drop zones.
- Browser company: not sure, I think they have a subscription, but I assume they still mostly run on VC money.
Chrome, Safari, and Edge are funded by their parent companies. I believe Google does also pay Apple $20B to be the default search engine on Safari and ios.
So you could make an argument that Google pays for browsers. A lot of browsers run on Chromium, owned and funded by Google (although technically open source). Except Apple and Mozilla who get search money from Google.
> Chrome, Safari, and Edge are funded by their parent companies.
Of course, but how do the parent companies fund them?
If I were a company, I'd only fund something if it provided capital (or the reasonable assumption of capital in an agreeable timeframe). But nobody is paying for Chrome (Google Chrome), Safari, or Edge.
Someone may say "but everyone uses a browser. If Google stopped releasing Chrome it would upset a lot of people." Of course, but Chrome is a huge effort, very complex, lots of money. Google isn't pouring money into it because it makes lots of people happy, nor are they doing it because they have a gun pointed at them (although I bet legislative guns would appear quickly if Google did unexpectedly pull Chrome from the virtual shelves). So I'm left with the only alternative: money being moved from something revenue generating (probably advertising as you've mentioned or selling datasets etc) to the Chrome effort to keep it going.
My question is about the specifics. These are publicly-traded companies, but a lot of the decisions are opaque. Has anyone here on HN come across good data or analysis of specifically how money is moved around to support the huge efforts of maintaining popular web browsers?
Imo it's pretty transparent, it's indeed all about ads. 70-80% of Google's revenue is from ads, that says it all imo.
First of all because of search: If you type something in the search bar of your browser, and that takes you to Google, you see all those ads and Google makes a lot of money.
Second of all because the browser is the entry point to the web. If you browse the web, the chance that you come across Google Adsense ads is very high, in other words, if you browse the web, Google makes money.
Browsers can control what you see, they can have ad blockers, they can replace ads (like the shady business Brave tried at some point), but also change the extension API so ad blockers are less effective (see manifest v3).
Conclusion: Controlling how people browse the internet is highly valuable as direct money maker (search ads) but also to make sure nobody but you can mess with 70-80% of your revenue. That alone is worth every dollar they spend on it.
Microsoft has Bing (but also based on chromium so less investment). Apple needs a browser for their devices, and gets 20B from Google to make it the default search engine (again, if Google can serve more ads, it makes more money). I don't know if Safari is well funded, they lag behind a bit currently.
Edit: Apple also has motivations btw. They have been lagging on implementing a lot of the features in Safari IOS that would make webapps more capable of replacing native apps, the App Store that Apple makes tons of money on... If you allow other browser you don't control that, so you need your own.
Second part why Google might want to fund Mozilla (and Safari to some extend) is to keep regulators happy. Being able to say "no no, it's not a monopoly, see!" is quite useful.
Idk if there is more data, but imo all you have to do is look at the financials, and it's pretty obvious that it's all about serving ads, billions of dollars in ads, directly or indirectly.
Delivering ads is based on data about you, so you get the most effective ads. Your browsing data is really valuable data in that sense.
If you read about the privacy controls in chrome you get a pretty good idea of what they collect:
> Your topics of interest are noted by Chrome and are based on your recent browsing history. Sites can also store info with Chrome about your interests. As you keep browsing, Chrome may be asked to share stored info about ad topics or site-suggested ads to help give you a more personalized ad experience. To measure the performance of ads, limited types of data can be shared among sites and apps.
This seems really nice. Wasn't aware of hack club but that just looks like a wonderful construction and organization.
In a world of VC backed open source projects with big profit motivations, it's refreshing to see things like this. Definitely going to give ghostty another try!
Wait, so there is one example, which shows the R and Python equivalents are pretty much the same..
I was all hyped up, ready to see the amazing examples and arguments that would convince me to pick up R, and it gave me absolutely nothing (except quotes and brackets..).
Just some different fields in the manifest, and there are specifics that work completely different or are not available (for example favicons).
I have tried Chrome -> Firefox before and it was surprisingly easy. Safari is more difficult in my experience, it's missing complete API's like the bookmarks one.
It is definitely possible, but not straightforward. With Manifest V3, the only way you can do this stuff is with the browser userScripts API. That is the only way you can execute remote code within the browser (and each script is considered "remote code").
These changes are the reason many of the existing userscript managers stopped working/being developed after MV3 went live. It is a real pain in the butt and unfortunately the functionality is not exactly the same between chrome and the generic browser API that firefox uses. There are a lot of edge cases that make everything even more of a pain.
Life would be much better (in many ways) if chrome didn't force MV3 down our throats.
I think the glaring issue underlying this is that the big companies are not investing enough in the tools they rely on.
I agree with some of the arguments that patching up vulnerabilities is important, but it's crazy to put that expectation on unpaid volunteers when you flood them with CVE's some completely irrelevant.
Also the solution is fairly simple: Either, you submit a PR instead of an issue. Or, you send a generous donation with the issue to reward and motivate the people who do the work.
The amount of revenue they generate using these packages will easily offset the cost of funding the projects, so I really think it's a fair expectation for companies to contribute either by delivering work or funds.
The solution is even simpler. The project puts the bug report in its triage backlog. It works through it in its own time, and decides on severity and priority. That's the time-honored method.
The compounding factor here is the automated reporting and disclosure process of Google's Project Zero. GPZ automatically discloses bugs after 90 days. Even if Google does not expect bugs to be fixed within this period, the FFmpeg devs clearly feel pressure.
But it is an open source project, basically a hobby for most devs. Why accept pressure at all? Continue to proceed in the time-honored method. If and when Youtube explodes because of a FFmpeg bug, Google has only itself to blame. They could have done something but decided to freeload.
There is a premium plan for the AI features, so that's the strategy, which does make some sense, I bet a lot of people will want to have those features.
Good software is never freemium. It is either paid upfront or it is a timebomb. I am okay with keeping things proprietary and asking for a fair price. Once free-to-play is introduced, the software is gone for good.
I thought about buying Affinity a couple of months ago since they offered a perpetual license. Now I won't even think installing it
It's a smart approach imo. They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features which they need to compete (just usage cost wise you can't do that on a one time fee license).
But since they promised not to go subscription when they got acquired by Canva, making it free with AI as the subscription is a clever solution to not break their promise while still introducing a subscription model.
I think their bet is enough people will want the AI, which I think is correct.
As a long time Affinity user, first reaction was: "see, there is the subscription", but on second thought, fair enough, well played. I'll probably get the AI subscription as well.
I do wonder if over time more features will go into that premium plan, but we'll see.
Edit: It seems like some of the AI stuff runs on device, they are not very clear about what does or doesn't. That makes me change my opinion a bit, as that's just straight up a freemium subscription model.
I think there are a lot of people like me who use it occasionally and won't bother with AI nor a subscription. To me this is a bad sign, as free is unsustainable. It's only a matter of time before they look at their metrics and realize "oh look, we have all these casual users who only use the free stuff, that's a new source of revenue!" at which point either the subscription now covers the app, or worse, they steal your shit for "AI training."
Hell, has anyone looked at the EULA for this "free" product? Maybe it's already doing that.
This is not necessarily true when the free product is a sales funnel.
Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" but giving away these tools creates goodwill in the design community and gives them exposure and a lower-friction conversion funnel towards their actual paid products.
Since they're desktop apps, there's very little cost to them for the free users who never convert (unlike Figma or other cloud-based products that have operational/bandwidth costs for all users).
> This is not necessarily true when the free product is a sales funnel.
In my experience, senior sales/revenue/whatever leaders see the free version as competing with the sales motion, not as a funnel (regardless of the reality). And argue to limit it more and more for short term conversion improvements.
I think a lot of the frustration seen here is that while Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" that Serif's (the previous company) business model was. Serif was something of the last one standing selling "desktop design applications" with that aligned to the incentives of "selling desktop design applications". With Serif bought by Canva and moving to a subscription model like all the other remaining tools, there is no one left with "selling desktop design applications" as a business model. That seems long-term unsustainable if your interest is "desktop design applications" that do their jobs well with few upsells to long-term subscriptions. The unsustainability that leads to upsells and subscription paywalls only generally ever get worse over time, because users of the free part aren't the desired customer.
On the plus side, when they layoff every single person that worked on Affinity in order to better align with something something market strategy, those people will be able to get together and start a new non-subscription desktop design applications company... with blackjack... and hookers.
I think you can still get Paint Shop Pro and CorelDraw as a one-time purchase from Corel. I'm not sure how good the current versions are, but I regularly use Paint Shop Pro 8 from 2003 and enjoy using it. Of course, it's definitely a rug pull if your workflow is Affinity focused and you have a ton of Affinity format files around.
Today's Corel seems very much a "use at your own security/bug risk" license-selling factory. They still sell support contracts (because those are lucrative) and sometimes patch the software for big security issues, but they seem to do that on a staff that is far more salespeople and lawyers (to wrangle ancient B2B legal contracts and new "minimal effort" security support contracts) than software developers. Their business model doesn't seem to be as much "selling desktop software" as it seems to be "fulfilling old support contracts for the zombies of classic desktop software".
That said, yes, maybe PSP and CorelDraw will solve some uses of parts of Affinity's stack for people looking for an alternative and don't mind paying close to full price for code that is mostly frozen in time from the late 90s and early 00s.
No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that if they want to have their own hardware and not have the industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to maximise their sales, they need to control their own app.
This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
Canva makes $3+ billion (up from $1.5 in 2023) per year; they have 21 million paying customers out of 240 million users. "Only" 8.75% are paying customers.
They don't need huge uptake in AI subscriptions from Affinity.
So yeah, free is sustainable for the foreseeable future.
My experience: clients want to use Canva for everything; designers don't.
This has a reasonable shot at eliminating reasons for designers to pass complex work back to Adobe's suite. If they disrupt Adobe's dominance at the professional end of the market, it puts Canva in a very comfortable position.
As long as Adobe is charging huge amounts of money, it seems like a free desktop app that competes with that and integrates with the existing Canva ecosystem would be worth it.
It looks like it is an offline application (after license verification) in he FAQ
>You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods.
As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe both.
>You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods.
Until you get a 2am e-mail stating that they've updated their terms of service, and by reading the e-mail, you have agreed to the updated terms because the chances of you challenging this in court are precisely zero, no matter what the internet IANALs say.
Free is not unsustainable if there is a paid tier.
For people like you who only use it occasionally, you're not the kind of person who's going to pay in the first place.
It's sustainable if the professionals people who use it daily/weekly find it's worth it to pay for the AI tools. And if you're a professional, you'll likely be needing those AI tools to keep up.
Thank you (long-time Affinity user and fan, and Canva employee here :)
Re. on-device AI features: these still have significant training costs; and Canva as a whole has paid hundreds of millions to date in royalties to creatives, including for AI training.
Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense.
I don't think it disappears - the copy I have will still be on my machine, and free to use as well. Unless they implemented something to remotely delete it?
This is only true for very badly written software, and/or on platforms that maintain very bad backward compatibility. It's not some natural law of software--it's choices that (IMO) bad developers choose to make over and over.
It’s not just the case of badly written software. It will work until they shut off the license servers.
Adobe CS2 is a highly-capable software suite that would happily run on today’s computers. I remember when Adobe shut down the license servers for CS2. They released a version that you didn’t need to activate to assure people that they would still be able to use the software they bought in the future. But then they got tired of hosting the download servers, so they stopped, and that was it.
This already happened with Affinity Photo v1 on iOS; a lot of functionality did not work after an iOS update. It feels like Apple changed something in their libraries, so it doesn't even matter how robust your software is if the underlying OS doesn't honor compatibility.
The Apple ecosystem, in general, is notorious for this: If you update your OS, some 3rd party applications will suddenly no longer work, because Apple keeps introducing breaking changes. But, if you don't update your software, other 3rd party applications will quickly abandon you and block you from using their software until you update. So, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Complicating this is: if your hardware is "too old" (as deemed by Apple), you can't update your software, so eventually you're left in the dust. You can't win.
Unfortunately there's also security people who work day and night to break old software and hardware that cannot keep up with the latest security standards.
your gripe is valid but misdirected. I also own a copy but, the one-time validation requires a validation server. Once that server goes offline, i can no longer install Affinity on a new machine.
I am sorry, but for me the app just died. That may sound dramatic but the promise at acquisition was that nothing would change. The picture that was drawn is that we would get a v3. Sure I would suspect some canva integration, but again, not a whole redo and relaunch that seems at first glance nothing like what we had, and completely taken over into the Canva system.
I have a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (I was a long-time, early employee and negotiated this as a perk). One reason I paid for and use Affinity is that it DOESN'T have AI. I want to be completely sure the photos I edit don't go up to a "cloud" somewhere, etc.
It's smart only if their business goal is to lose every single customer they had specifically because it wasn't subscription software and didn't have the AI junk that their customers specifically did not want.
The DTP app actually does something that neither InDesign nor Quark handles properly, but it's something so specific I would dox myself if I mentioned it.
It looks very similar to what they already had. If you had all three they all were already integrated, you can just switch between the different types of editing modes.
I think the solution is one of the big companies with lots of money to acquire tailwind. Specifically Vercel. They use it, their v0 thing uses tailwind allover, they have bought a bunch of open source companies in the past, and they should have deep enough pockets. Last year they acquired tremor blocks, which is a UI library, that uses tailwind!
Makes perfect sense, lets get it done.