HN Gopher Feed (2017-08-02) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Krita Foundation: Update
227 points by ridgewell
https://krita.org/en/item/krita-foundation-update/___________________________________________________________________
lkurusa - 2 hours ago
This made me switch to PIA. Thank you!
zitterbewegung - 7 hours ago
This is great! I'm not a user but, with all this hubub I am feeling
like I should try it over the weekend or lunch (I do abstract art).
Everyone that seems to use the software has given glowing reviews.
[deleted]
baldfat - 7 hours ago
I think you are going to love it. I also do a little abstract
work and man there is nothing that really touches Krita for doing
my kind of paintings. Just if you are coming from a non-painting
program its going to give you a few fits at first.
deft - 7 hours ago
Warning: conspiracy belowWhat's with PIA buying out IRC networks
and 'donating'/funding so many OSS projects? It's weird. On
freenode other VPN services have been banned. What's their goal
with krita? PIA doesn't have FOSS. Why are they sponsoring so many
FOSS projects?
shmerl - 6 hours ago
It's good marketing for them. And it helps FOSS projects. Win
win.
neonnoodle - 7 hours ago
Advertising to FOSS nerds who are more likely to become their
customers. There are a lot of VPN services out there and it
probably helps them stand out from the crowd as legitimate and
not creepy or fly-by-night.
adam12 - 6 hours ago
Yes, smart advertising. I use PIA every now and then when I go
on trips. Seeing this donation made me feel really good about
choosing PIA.
brink - 7 hours ago
It would be nice if this kind of philanthropy were more common so
that it would no longer be weird. I've found PIA to be more of a
company of principles than profits. They were booted out of
Russia due to their refusal to compromise on their logging
practices. Not every company has to be so money obsessed,
especially those who don't have to face the pressure of outside
investors. Hogging money can only bring so much happiness.
There's also a ton of positive PR involved with the tech-savvy
community (their consumer base) when donating to foundations /
projects like this.
kuschku - 7 hours ago
.
pmoriarty - 7 hours ago
PIA took over freenode? That's really bizarre and worrysome.
I had not heard this, and was somehow under the impression that
freenode must have been run by a non-profit foundation, not a
for-profit entity.
detaro - 7 hours ago
the announcement: https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn (from
April)
[deleted]
vertex-four - 1 hours ago
Freenode in its original form was slowly dying - running in
partnership with Private Internet Access means they don't
have to stress out quite so much about stretching every penny
and the behind-the-scenes of running a non-profit, and can
focus on the longer-term projects they've been trying to
implement.Freenode is registered as a "private company
limited by guarantee without share capital" performing
"activities of other membership organisations not elsewhere
classified", with Christel and Andrew Lee (PIA's founder) as
officers, and Andrew Lee having the majority of voting
rights. Any profits are not to be distributed under their
articles of association, making it a not-for-profit
company.Frankly speaking... I suspect that Andrew Lee is a
techie who came into a pile of money and actually,
legitimately wants to prevent IRC from dying.
davehtaylor - 6 hours ago
This is extremely worrisome. What is their endgame? Who are
the people behind PIA, and what is their motivation? Sure,
freenode is an important network to keep alive, but PIA seems
to be spreading it's influence in a lot of places.
pyre - 6 hours ago
> I mean, funding projects is nice, but doing so while
requiring the projects you fund to do what you request (see
Freenode/Snoonet and other VPNs)Do you have proof of PIA
"required the projects [they] fund to what [they] request?" Do
you have proof that the takeover of Freenode is related to
that?I'll agree that the takeover of Freenode is troubling, but
you are making unsubstantiated claims, stating them as fact,
and mixing in things that are actually facts (as if they
somehow make your claims more true).
qznc - 6 hours ago
By owner you mean Andrew Lee? Wikipedia also mentions some "Ted
Kim", but the citation does not support that claim.
boudewijnrempt - 5 hours ago
Well... The team member who contacted me told me he had got Krita
on his arch laptop and loved it. And since it's impossible to
attach strings to something like Krita...I have to admit, two
weeks ago I (and Irina, who does the artist interviews on
krita.org) got some very insistent mails from some company that
promised a 20k/month income if only we'd embed their hidden tor
node software in Krita. I deleted those mails, of course, but not
having heard of Private Internet Access before, I initially
thought they were related!But no, not at all. And, yes -- I have
to admit, do live under a stone, in a cave. I spend so much time
on Krita that large parts of the world pass me by. To me, a VPN
is an ssh connection...
deft - 3 hours ago
Thanks for the information, that's very interesting... Glad
that offer was turned down :)I'm not saying the PIA thing is
bad, and getting funding is amazing. I just find what PIA is
doing weird. As you said you can't really attach strings to
krita so it's fine.Thanks!
Sylos - 4 hours ago
Customer trust is one of the most valuable metrics for a VPN
provider, so this is extremely good PR for them.
grantwu - 6 hours ago
I just asked on #freenode. There is no such VPN ban.
the_common_man - 6 hours ago
Very nice, they actually sponsor some really big things like EFF,
Gnome. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-
spo... . Thank you privateinternetaccess!
noir_lord - 6 hours ago
Avoiding the use of the word 'synergy' it makes sense for them to
do that, I'd imagine that the techy market makes up a good chunk
of their market and more importantly is the part that answers
questions like 'I'm worried about my privacy how do I protect
it?'Something I answered a week or so ago when my 60 year old Mum
asked me about it (she'd seen a news story about what our Dear
Leader and Rudd where up to this time).
buovjaga - 5 hours ago
Recently they started sponsoring Kiwi IRC development: https://ki
wiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI...Elsewhere in
this HN thread, their acquiring of IRC networks was presented as
a threat. I had not heard of the Snoonet deal so I went and
looked and the announcement paints a very different picture:
https://snoonet.org/updates/56-snoonet-joins-the-
privateinte..."Because I was about something more than myself,
the owner, and director of marketing took a great interest in our
mission. After speaking with them for a bit I came to learn that
they grew up on IRC and valued it so much as it's where they
started off, like many of us learning to program, network with
others, and run our community live chats.[...]I then traveled to
the owner's house with some slight expectations, and some doubt ?
do nice things just happen to us? To my surprise, I was blown
away after playing endless rounds of Mario Kart, and witnessing
them hard at work with what they believe in."
ApolloFortyNine - 3 hours ago
Wow, go PIA. I've been a member for years now with no problems
(being able to select different locations helped a lot back in the
day where League of Legends would actually give half the ping if I
routed through Toronto). Their dedication to supporting OSS
projects just reinforces my support.
X86BSD - 2 hours ago
This warmed my tiny little black heart. I am glad to see the
results were positive!
anigbrowl - 2 hours ago
Very good of PIA to sponsor this worthy project.This episode, and
previous ones with NumPy, Octave and other open-source projects
have got me thinking: would it be worth adopting Swedish-style
radical transparency and publishing a project's financial status
and balance in a standardized format, so that it could become a
standard item in a Github repo?Too often projects die for lack of
interest or slow down for lack of funding and it's not obvious
because many people don't like asking for money, especially if
making money isn't their primary goal. When they do run into a cash
crunch, it's embarrassing for them and potential donors have to
evaluate the project in the light of a financial failure rather
than its best aspects, albeit a tiny failure of cash flow rather
than the epic fails of overconfident commercial bets.And there lies
a secondary problem. Because many open source innovators aren't
motivated by money, they often don't have a clear vision of how
money could help them, and avoid dealing with it because the
pursuit of it will take up too much of their head space and
distract them from the artistic/ design/ development/
investigative/ scientific/ whatever work they are doing. There's
tons of work being done without finance or monetization of any kind
that could definitely benefit from both, but where the doers don't
wish to be distracted by the questions that surround maximizing
ROI.Could a fully transparent non-profit or non-extractive funding
model attract interest and participation from investors, patrons,
and commercial sales people who understand and like financial
infrastructure well enough to support the specialist producer
rather than just maximizing short-term return - in other words, to
share some of the structural benefits of working within a firm
without the authoritarian and political pressures that normally
accompany employment?
kronos29296 - 2 hours ago
Glad to see FOSS in trouble got a good Samaritan on time. Need more
people like this.
[deleted]
Confiks - 7 hours ago
Never waste a good crisis, or why you should sometimes be foolish
to harvest your accumulated merit.
publicfig - 7 hours ago
This is great to hear, glad to see good FOSS projects get the help
they need. I only have a little bit of experience with Krita, but
it's always been in my mind as a go-to if I ever need those
tools.It does seem a bit misleading, however, to not update the top
bar to include the new funding (unless it just hasn't been updated
yet). I know a lot of people will see the first blog post but not
the second, and I hope the intention isn't to trick them into
thinking they are still in a financial emergency (not that you
shouldn't still donate)
boudewijnrempt - 6 hours ago
The top bar only takes data from paypal, not bank transfers :-(
Sir_Cmpwn - 6 hours ago
Would probably be pretty easy to manually mix in bank transfer
data.
Freak_NL - 6 hours ago
The donation page didn't say anything about a reference to
include with an IBAN-transfer (aside from the Krita foundation
name), but I guess most of the incoming funds will be donations
anyhow.Boudewijn: Sterkte met de afwikkeling van de BTW-
ellende.
boudewijnrempt - 5 hours ago
Dank je -- vandaag kwam het sponsorgeld van Private Internet
Access binnen, en ik heb gelijk betaald. Closure! Ik ben nu
wel een uitgerekt elastiekje...
williamle8300 - 5 hours ago
You guys should use the business model that the makers of Sketch
use (Bohemian Coding).You pay a one-time fee $99 to download the
app with all available features and new features for one year (365
days). After 365 days, when the Bohemian Coding team builds new
features you have to pay $99 again to get those features...
etcetera.It's a great business model because you get the best of
both worlds (one-time, and subscription model). This gives you
capital to get started, and bootstraps your company as the software
matures.
boudewijnrempt - 5 hours ago
That's a bit hard when all the code is licensed as GPLv2+ and
there are about 600 copyright holders :)
GuiA - 5 hours ago
Krita is free and open source, deliberately so. How do you see
that model working while retaining those 2 aspects?
SXX - 2 hours ago
It's not like this would work for project like Krita, but there
are free and open source projects that sell binaries and
updates. E.g Synergy: https://symless.com/synergy
pkaye - 1 hours ago
Krita does have a paid app in the Windows App store plus they
have a one on Steam called Gemini. But I'd guess they don't
make a lot on this. Something like Synergy primarily makes
money because it gets sold to business which are more willing
to spend.
bane - 6 hours ago
Huh, I just made an account with the the PIA folks. Glad to know
that my very reasonable monthly fee is helping to support great
projects.
0xFFFE - 7 hours ago
Honest question, why so much negativity towards someone who wants
to donate 20k to a good cause?
kuschku - 7 hours ago
.
calcifer - 7 hours ago
Surely you are not just going to throw out such an inflammatory
statement without substantiating it, right?
kuschku - 6 hours ago
.
pyre - 6 hours ago
I'm sorry, but "taking over snoonet and freenode" is a lot
more than "I donated some money with strings attached."
It's like being afraid of (any) people investing in your
company because they might try to execute a hostile
takeover.Present us with evidence of money being donated
with strings attached, not of PIA buying out projects that
they have donated to in the past.
coldtea - 6 hours ago
"Took over" meaning, in substantial terms?
kuschku - 6 hours ago
.
falava - 6 hours ago
Thank you for sharing this info.
boudewijnrempt - 6 hours ago
There are no strings attached. I was really surprised when they
contacted me on IRC, but they already sponsor other orgs, like
the Gnome Foundation or Freenode, as you can see on their
frontpage: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ .
kuschku - 6 hours ago
.
la_oveja - 6 hours ago
dude wtf, you have a magic ball that can see the future
actions of others? geez, your comment made me sick
calcifer - 6 hours ago
You have many comments in this thread complaining about...
something, but I'm yet to see proof of a single bad thing
that PIA has done to projects they sponsor.
wjnc - 6 hours ago
You should Google and read up on 'Wwft' (Dutch law). You
wouldn't want to go from VAT troubles to terrorism financing
or money laundering troubles with that same tax office.No
intention of stirring up troubles in this thread and congrats
on having your problem solved!, but large gifts of unknown /
foreign origin can get a lot of attention. Especially if it
goes across many countries. So it seems wise to have the
sponsor checked out. Your bank and accountant will probably
ask the same question at a certain point in time.
syshum - 3 hours ago
When ever I think the US Legal System has to be the most
insane system ever, I simply look up EU Laws and cases and
then realize how much better the US system is even with all
its screwed up flaws...The idea that Accepting an donation
from PIA could be even remotely considered money laundering
or terrorism financing is beyond insane to me