
Krita Foundation: Update - ridgewell
https://krita.org/en/item/krita-foundation-update/
======
the_common_man
Very nice, they actually sponsor some really big things like EFF, Gnome.
[https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-
spo...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-sponsor) .
Thank you privateinternetaccess!

~~~
buovjaga
Recently they started sponsoring Kiwi IRC development:
[https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI...](https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess)

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...](https://snoonet.org/updates/56-snoonet-joins-the-
privateinternetaccess-com-family)

"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
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.

------
anigbrowl
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?

~~~
jnbiche
> 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?

This is a great idea, particularly if there were some way for solo maintainers
to flag/indicate that they're having financial problems and so close to
abandoning the OS project for a better-paying job. Many widely-used OS
projects are not run by not-for-profits but rather by individuals.

But I really like the idea of a standard financial report in the github repo,
are there any existing standards we could use for this? Like from the
International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) or similar?

If this catches on, there could even be an aggregator website that publishes
monthly reports of all participating open source projects' financial status,
with charts, flourishing projects, projects in distress, etc, and links for
potential donors to click to donate.

------
publicfig
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
The top bar only takes data from paypal, not bank transfers :-(

~~~
Freak_NL
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
Dank je -- vandaag kwam het sponsorgeld van Private Internet Access binnen, en
ik heb gelijk betaald. Closure! Ik ben nu wel een uitgerekt elastiekje...

------
0xFFFE
Honest question, why so much negativity towards someone who wants to donate
20k to a good cause?

------
bane
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.

------
zitterbewegung
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.

~~~
paki123
Any tips on how to get better or any good resources/communities to learn from?
I've been messing with gimp and use to do abstract art on Photoshop, but
haven't for a long time because I got disheartened

~~~
hex12648430
If you're looking for Krita-specific resources I can recommend this course by
David Revoy. It goes over pretty much everything there is to know about Krita
and has been a huge help to me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAs-
UMLB90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAs-UMLB90)

It's in French but you can enable English subtitles and those seem pretty
good.

As for getting better as an artist in my opinion nothing beats just practicing
a bit everyday and knowing what your tools can do for you. Having some
knowledge about fundamentals like composition, balance and color harmonies
will also help a lot. You can find a ton of tutorials about these subjects on
youtube.

Edit: I just noticed that the second part of the course doesn't have any
subtitles yet. It's a shame but it's probably still worth quickly scrolling
through it to get an idea about what the software can do.

------
deft
Warning: conspiracy below

What'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?

~~~
kuschku
.

~~~
pmoriarty
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.

~~~
vertex-four
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.

------
lkurusa
This made me switch to PIA. Thank you!

------
kronos29296
Glad to see FOSS in trouble got a good Samaritan on time. Need more people
like this.

------
X86BSD
This warmed my tiny little black heart. I am glad to see the results were
positive!

------
kuschku
.

~~~
sctb
Please stop doing this or we'll ban the account. We detached this subthread
from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911436)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
kuschku
What part do you consider bannable?

That I protest against a single person buying up control over major parts of
the FLOSS community, and centralizing power?

Or that I use editing as a workaround for a bug in HN, where in some
situations deleting comments becomes impossible?

------
Confiks
Never waste a good crisis, or why you should sometimes be foolish to harvest
your accumulated merit.

------
williamle8300
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.

~~~
GuiA
Krita is free and open source, deliberately so. How do you see that model
working while retaining those 2 aspects?

~~~
SXX
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](https://symless.com/synergy)

~~~
pkaye
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.

