Important: This is not VC funding. This is a Kickstarter project [1].<p>Honestly, this feels like a scam. Their logo and name is stupidly similar to Adobe which would obviously result in trademark lawsuit. I think they are just scrounging up money from the Kickstarter and will just disappear after a while.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-suite-of-world-class-design-and-photography-tools" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-s...</a>
Remember those "day in the life of a Google Project Manager" videos, where they do nothing but hang out on Zoom meetings and pig out on free food and snacks?<p>Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.)<p>$235k is absolutely nothing for software development, and you probably won't be able to hire even one talented developer -- let alone a team -- with a war-chest that size.
As someone who was trained extensively on Adobe products and is using them regularly, I can just recommend to give the Affinity tools a look. (They also got a summer sale running right now, so you can grab the whole suite for a $150 one time payment.)<p>They work really well, some things are just the same as in the Creative Cloud, and I'am not missing anything so far.<p>Sadly, the commercial world will mostly stick to Adobe, so I'll have to use that at work, too. Pricing for the Creative Cloud is just too high if you want to do it "for fun", though.
Really confused by this.. $235K is not nearly enough to make even one of these apps.
Unless they can get devs to work for free it's not happening.<p>Also Affinity exists, their suite has basically the same apps as they claim they will build, they have one-time very reasonably priced licenses. The only potential difference is that you need to pay for major version updates, from 1 to 2 took a bit under 10 years if I'm not mistaken.<p>Affinity has allowed me to not use Adobe for a long time, (until they bought Figma.. but well).<p>And it seems odd to me to clone very old software in a world that has evolved.<p>Anyway, always pro having more options, so good luck to them!
$235K ? Yeah, erm, sure you're not missing a few zeros at the end of that ?<p>First people want well written software that has ongoing support and updates. $235K will barely get you to a workable beta version that competes with the Adobe suite.<p>Secondly, that's a hell of a risk calling yourself "Abode" and having a logo that could be argued to be "confusingly similar". Even if Adobe don't take you to court over it, they could still easily make you rack up $235K in out-of-court lawyers fees.
$235K does not seem like the amount of money needed to take on Adobe. At the very, very best this gets you 4 developers and an artist for a year, I don't see how that is enough to even compete with the numerous FOSS alternatives.<p>This is an artist wanting to make multiple high effort products. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some serious confusion about what it takes to develop software going on here.<p>I also don't think that having Adobe, but without subscriptions, is really the solution to the problem. There are already usable, if not good FOSS alternatives out there. Maybe building up those is more productive?
I imagine a branding change will be in order before actually delivering anything to users?<p>While I could believe in the artist and their history of fighting off legal challenges, I am sceptical around the ability to (re)build even one of the mentioned tools for the budget. Adobe has an immense moat (hence its complete gall around subscription pricing) for a reason. Otherwise everyone would just be using GIMP.
I dislike Adobe more than most people and feel more strongly than most that it's essential we have viable alternatives.<p>But the whole way this has gone about seems incredibly naive both to the realities of building piece of software like that and not to mention just trying to make the "Open Office" to Adobes "MS Office" is really shortsighted considering what modern tools look like.<p>Feel the ultimate end of this is running out of money probably with barely a prototype and causing a lot of bad blood with the artists and illustrators who trusted him with their money, also naive to how much this stuff actually costs when the founder can't create anything towards the goal themselves.<p>Oh I also notice they fell into amateur crowdfunding trap of offering merch for a tier as low as £129. Getting those produced will cost at least £30 each for only 320 of them, shipping anywhere in the world, hoodies are heavy and bulky can go up to £50, the time/money wasted organizing the logistics of it isn't worth it. By the end of it you've probably lost money.
I get and appreciate the joke but...<p>- $235k is sweet FA<p>- Going after Goliath out of gate is a rookie mistake. Niche down as tight as possible. They should be looking for niche Adobe is missing and then continue for there. Don't compete with Adobe. Instead, move into a blue ocean with as little competition as possible.<p>It'll be interesting to watch but that funding needs a zero or two added to the end.
I feel like the inevitable trademark dispute would not be in Semple's favor. He seems to think it's fine, probably because he's gotten away with it in the past due to "parody", but when you're actually selling a product that is the same as the product the other company is selling, I think it will be much harder to use that defense.
A lot of people continue to use Adobe, no matter how much they rip them off, because there is no alternative, for better or worse, and when someone somewhere says they are going to make apps that can compete with Adobe, I don't think professional quality apps will actually be developed.
$235K and 16 months? What are they going to do, rebrand open source software? I really doubt anything will come of this project. I really like this guy (or his PR), but I can't see this project to succeed in any way.
Hold my beer.. Leeeeeroy!<p>There is a Photoshop alternative already (Photopea), but its maker chose to keep quiet about battling corporate overlords and such matters. Obviously a marketing noob, compared to this fiery kickstarter.
This is such a bad take. There’s already a bunch of apps that don’t operate on subscription models - like Affinity Photo, Pixelmator Pro - and free apps like GIMP<p>Not only that, they cost more than the each of the apps I listed
While I love the idea of sticking it to Adobe, that’s not remotely enough time or money. That would barely cover the cost of a single skilled developer working for one year.
That demo had literally no technical features demoed.<p>I was excited for a second but that video really is for suckers. It looks like they didn't work on the product yet at all.
> WHO’S BEHIND IT?<p>> I’m Stuart Semple, I’m an artist and an activist. I come from the contemporary art world and have had several exhibitions around the world.<p>> More relevant to this is the fact I’ve been working with technology my whole life. I studied advanced art and design, and I have been using well-known software tools since the 90s.<p>> I’ve found an amazingly passionate team of geeks<p>> To make amazing word class software costs money. There’s no point doing this unless it’s really really good. The geeks are being extremely generous but they will need to be paid. So your pledge is going to be used to make sure they can live whilst they do the work.<p>> You can expect:<p>> ONdesign - a familiar and fully featured Desktop publishing application
> illustrateIT - a vector drawing and illustration package, with all the bits you love using
> photoPOP - photo editing
> Impress - super-fast mobile app, full of templates.<p>I don't think the artist/activist with no business experience, programming ability, who has found "a team of geeks" will succeed in building a full replacement of the Adobe suite.<p>The extent of this endeavor seems to be the thought "I feel like Adobe products should be cheaper than they are. They must only be expensive because of capitalism" and then the creation of a kickstarter grift.