What is OpenCreativity?

OpenCreativity’s sole goal is to be the interoperability layer between creative free & open source applications, Unlike Adobe where there is cohesion between applications, in FOSS applications, there is a lack of interoperability that’s holding back the applications, OpenCreativity goal is to tackle this problem.

The Adobe problem
The Solution
How to help
- Donate
- Volunteering
Accepted Applications
Footnotes
- Extra links

The Adobe problem

If you already know why Adobe is morally questionable you can skip to the solution part.

Introduction

In the digital creative space, Adobe is the main company “selling” creative applications like the popular Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, Adobe has been critiqued for many unethical practices, some of which are documented below.

Subscription-only model

In 2013 Adobe went from selling to a full licensing model to massive community outcry[fn:1] [fn:2], having a subscription only model is a big disservice for students and non-professionals who most always can’t afford to license such software for their endevors[fn:2], a byproduct of the model is the not having the ability to access files from proprietary file formats[fn:3]

Adobe monopoly status

Adobe is a monopoly with software like Photoshop with *90%*[fn:4] marketshare, therefore they can price their products however they like and they have done so[fn:5], they also buy competitors like Figma[fn:6] to preserve their market dominance instead of competing.

Software Patents use

As a company, Adobe holds multiple software patents for application specific features like “Image foreground detection”[fn:7] or “GUI Locking”[fn:8] etc, this is regarded as unethical by many people by the fact that this legally prevents competitors from implementing the same features.

Anti-patterns

Adobe has been accused of tricking customers into a 12 month month contract[fn:9], Adobe enrolling users into the subscription model using the free trial[fn:10], charging a subscription cancellation fee[fn:11], etc[fn:12].

The Solution

As i have said before OpenCreativity’s sole goal is to be the interoperability layer between creative free & open source applications, here is a roadmap on how we can do that.

Phase 1, reproducible scripts

Reproducible scripts are scripts using Nix so that we don’t have the problem of “It works in my machine”, therefore simplifying the distribution and connecting applications that are already interoperable (with plugins) like Darktable with GIMP.

Phase 2, Interopebility plugins

Once we have written all the scripts we can move to creating (and mantaining) plugins between applications that don’t have them so that they can communicate and work together seamlessly.