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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free. I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic, they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well to, yaknow, synergize

Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual licenses for software that can work without a cloud component. Opus, Sublime, Mathematica, totally agree that paying for software aligns incentives. But if it is online, it's a SaaS, and they can't very well offer you cloud services forever at a one time cost. (Rsync.net has a deal to prepay ~4 years worth upfront and they'll let you use it for life but it's capped at 1TB)

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I've been using ByteDance's CapCut video editor that has this business model and I've been blown away by the top quality tool you get for free. It really doesn't feel scammy when they ask for money for fancy features that cost them extra GPU cycles to run the AI models.

To add to this, Davinci Resolve is also great freemium software IMO

Kdenlive is free and open-source and is so great, such a slept on app

It shares the trait of every QT app the ux is horrible.

I do agree that most Qt apps don't put much attention on UX - but I tried to with my Qt app: https://get-notes.com

I've been trying to use Kdenlive for years now, and everyone raves about how great it is.

I don't know what they're doing with it, because it seems to lack even the most basic editing functionality.

yep and it crashes all the time, at least for me.

CapCut is surely the greatest video editor out there. Such a shame it's not available on PC

I'm guessing they are giving the core away for free to collect training data.

I think it's simpler than that. Canva's primary competitor is Adobe, and Adobe's remaining advantage is with creative professionals. That's Adobe's core market and their core revenue stream.

It's a classic "commoditize your complements" play. Canva remains profitable without charging for Affinity, but Adobe can't stay profitable if they stop charging for Photoshop/Illustrator.

The business justification works without imputing any more sinister motives than that.

I mean, 9/10ths of the dark-pattern distrustworthy bullshit businesses pull is not required to attain or maintain "profitability," it's just squeezing every dime of revenue from their customers.

I would frankly rather pay for software then be left wondering if I can trust free commercial software.

Would be really nice if we had more of the "just pay" options. As it is the "just pay" options mostly also can't be trusted any more than the free(-mium) options, and both will try their best to "squeeze every dime of revenue".

I think they're giving it away to take mindshare away from Adobe among younger creators. The rise of Capcut and similar mobile first software eventually leads to Adobe, Final Cut for video, and Davinci Resolve. This provides a ladder from Canva to Affinity under one banner at low to no cost.

They claim not to, but I am extremely suspicious.

>No, your content in Affinity is not used to train AI-powered features, or to help AI features learn and improve in other ways, such as model evaluation or quality assurance. In Affinity, your content is stored locally on your device and we don’t have access to it. If you choose to upload or export content to Canva, you remain in control of whether it can be used to train AI features — you can review and update your privacy preferences any time in your Canva settings.

I mean, be suspicious, that’s always good. But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up.

>But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up

When it comes to such things, it's better to assume bad intent.

Assuming corporate benevolence as the default is foolish.

This is a better point than the one I made

That’s what suspicion means.

That is why I said I'm suspicious, and did not make a claim that they are doing it. Thanks for your input.

You can opt out of the telemetry sharing

So they say, for now, for some definition of "telemetry" and "sharing", caveat caveat caveat..

Asterisks and super-text numbers, the foundation of any trusting business relationship thumbs up

"... Rsync.net has a deal to prepay ~4 years worth upfront and they'll let you use it for life but it's capped at 1TB ..."

To clarify ... it is not capped. You may scale the lifetime payment option to any size you like in 100 GB increments.

You may also upgrade it later in life, most likely for less money/TB ...

This means that our (the provider) and your (the user) interests are perfectly aligned: we want you to use more storage and we will make it easy for you to do so. Your needs, and usage, will grow and you will make further payments to us over time - just on a longer, more drawn out schedule.

Once AI blows up in a spectacular unprofitable mess (as it will for 90% of the companies in this space), then what though?

Given that it’s the only thing keeping the US economy afloat right now? Then many of us are loosing our jobs, and no longer having access to drawing tools will matter little.

If the bubble pops, we'll lose our jobs. If it doesn't and the hype turns out to be real, then we'll still lose our jobs. Tomato, potato.

I think it depends on how it's used or integrated. Image generation and editing seems to be the of the more useful things. "Take outt the power lines from this photo." Etc.

Well all have bigger problems when that happens

You are far too trusting. The free users are the product. It’s now a platform, not an app.

> Opus

Which software is that? I can only think about either the open source codec or the LLM from Anthropic.

Directory Opus, replacement for File Explorer. It's got a whole bag of tricks but I just appreciate the built in "convert to x" and FTP, oh and the bulk file renaming. Oh and built in support for various archive formats (no more winrar). Oh and (etc etc)

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

And no data sharing or telemetry? Couldn’t find anything on their website.

Exactly, this should be celebrated.

pCloud also has lifetime payment for a storage service.

This must be some kind of Ponzi scheme, I guess they must count on

1. storage getting cheaper 2. traffic getting cheaper 3. that people will need more and more storage with time

Lifetime means until the company is bankrupt or gets acquired. It doesn't mean your lifetime.

I’ve had multiple “lifetime“ accounts cancelled on me without bankruptcy, just changes in their product line. It doesn’t seem to mean anything.

You should sue in small claims.

See also Garmin GPS lifetime map data updates, where you update your venerable well functioning gps device, after which it no longer works, sorry no longer supported

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