So, recently I decided to visit the Libre Graphics World website again and see if I found any interesting articles. Of course I found a few interesting articles, so I will discuss them briefly and my thoughts here.
First of all, the article on the recently open sourced render manager from Google and Sony Pictures Imageworks teaming up. Here we had some proven software that was used for many feature films that was proprietary until recently. However, there were also recently created open-source render managers from the likes of the Blender Foundation and others. On one hand, it’s good to know that some important software is being published as open-source. On the other hand, it is a bit of a bummer that it had to be delayed to so late, enticing others to do a little bit of rework.
The second article, on what was originally supposed to be a lightweight graphics editor, is interesting. Originally it started out completely from scratch, but it borrowed the name of PhotoFiltre by using the name “PhotoFiltre LX.” This created problems of elevated expectations from previous PhotoFiltre users who were constantly comparing the new software to the old one, and the author really didn’t like having such rigid constraints. Hence, the author renamed the software to have more freedom in terms of community members. Originally the software was simple for quite some time, but soon it added more advanced features and functions. Particularly noteworthy was that there was one long-time commercial contributor that resulted in the author going from only working on the project as a hobby to working on it part-time. Part of the advisory was to use Qt for the windowing toolkit in preference of GTK+ as that toolkit was a better choice for more commercial software… in light of recent GTK+ API instability and controversy.
On one hand, I really like how there are always new software projects in the libre software world. On the other hand, sometimes the turmoil of an existing established software project only lasting short term and ending abruptly can be quite disruptive for, well… hobbies. As a hobbyist, I might work on something longer term at a slower pace, as opposed to a professional who would work on something shorter term at a faster pace. But, if you look at the opportunity of libre software as mainly being able to onboard many newcomers quickly, efficiently, and economically, there is definitely nothing wrong with the turmoil.
Also, I found the Openshot video editor which some prefer as a good open-source video editor.
20190222/http://libregraphicsworld.org/
20190222/http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/google-and-imageworks-team-up-on-opencue-open-source-render-manager
20190222/http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/photoflare-interview-2019
20190222/https://www.openshot.org/