Photoshop Express Terms of Use Cause Stir, Will Be Revised 111
Earlier this week, we discussed Adobe's beta launch of Photoshop Express, a free, online version of the popular image editing software. However, as a number of readers pointed out, the terms of use included language which granted Adobe a wide range of rights to any photos that were made available on the site. Now, after receiving a great deal of feedback from potential users, Adobe has stated their intent to rewrite the terms of use, as Ars Technica reports. David Morgenstern of ZDNet also notes the impending change, and briefly discusses the privacy and ownership concerns involved with content you post online.
Even if they "fix" it .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of the technical merits, the reality is that Photoshop has the acceptance of professionals everywhere, and that kind of inertia will be hard to overcome even if GIMP ultimately exceeds Photoshop in capability and usability. "Free" means little to people that use something as a business tool that can be written off their taxes, and which they must trust to get the job done. That said, Photoshop is hardly perfect, Adobe is an obnoxious company, and I sincerely hope that the GIMP makes it out of amateur status and truly does go head-to-head with Adobe's stuff. Sooner or later it will, I think.
I'm starting to wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real issue is GIMPs interface is just different. It looks a lot like PaintShopPro at least used to. I was a PaintShopPro user for some time and switching to GIMP was easy.
I like the GIMP. Anyone interested in GIMP ought to just download it and try it out for themselves and see what they think. Give it some time. It always takes a while to learn a different interface. I think people would be pleasantly surprised if they would just try GIMP for a while instead of being turned off that its interface isn't the same as Photoshop's.
Re:Even if they "fix" it .. (Score:4, Insightful)
who's to say they won't change it back again at some point in the future?
Anything is possible. But what's more important is what's likely.
Adobe has really little to gain by changing it back to current incarnation of the license. They're in the business of producing and selling software, not tricking people into given them rights to sell stock photography. They won't change it back because it'd be a pretty obviously dumb business move by Adobe.
This really highlights all the problems with using someone else's equipment to host and processes personal data files.
No, it really highlights the fact that many software companies don't really understand the legal implications of hosting someones data. They likely just called up the lawyers and said "make sure we don't get burned somehow by hosting this content". The lawyers pulled out some boilerplate language and changed it around a little bit, not thinking that the guy submitting content might actually want to retain some of his rights (end users have right? Who'd have thought that!).
Not every company is trying to screw you over at every single moment. They tend to pick and choose those times carefully
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they might start by calling it something other than GIMP....
Which of the more common definitions do you think people associate with this fine product?
Gimp: lameness: disability of walking due to crippling of the legs or feet
Gimp: is a usually derogatory term used to refer to a (male or female) sexual submissive person, typically dressed in black leather (or rubber), often in a gimp suit, and wearing a bondage hood or mask of the same material. ...
Courtesy of http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+gimp [google.com]Your average Joe isn't going to know that it means GNU Image Manipulation Program.
For God sake, the most common definition implies that it is crippled! I haven't used the GIMP much, my company bought a copy of Photoshop just for little ol' me. So to me it makes no difference if the GIMP is free or not, setting aside its ridiculous name, I didn't have to pay for Photoshop anyway.
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:2, Insightful)
GIMP? Please, come back to me when they pull their arses from their heads. All "Its just different" bullshit you shout won't change a thing.
Gimp is udder cows balls until they get their act together and get a good Useability story. Meanwhile, stay in your mamma's basement.
Re:I'm starting to wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, is this a case where Adobe tried to sneak one past the public and got busted
Adobe, like any entity, doesn't act as one. They might like to think they all made some big great decision about The Best Approach, but that kind of thing, if it happens, takes place over a period of time.
The most likely scenario is some group at Adobe said "we need a free product to compete with other free products, otherwise we risk being irrelevant!" The marketing people decided what features it needed, the software guys worked on their end, the lawyers did what they do and tried to protect Adobe from liability. Finally the product was released. The lawyers didn't think about marketing, the marketing people didn't think about the legal side of things, and so you got this really dumb EULA that gave all the rights to Adobe, and none to anyone else. It's an effect that often happens at large companies do to compartmentalization, and not enough people looking across the aisles.
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:4, Insightful)
8. Offer a UI skin that is more like ps.
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't use GIMP on the Mac for two reasons.
That said, I use and am satisfied with GIMP on Linux, simply because it's not that bad and there's no real alternative.
-:sigma.SB
Re:I'm starting to wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition license terms (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't seem clear to me at all that you can't use the Express VC++ to write, compile, or distribute open-source applications.
Open source, in my understanding, merely requires that you distribute your source such that someone can recompile it. It does not require you to distribute the compiler with it. Nor does it require that the compiler be open source.
Thus, if your code can compile with Cygwin and VC++, but you distribute the copy you created with VC++, I don't see what the issue would be. Users who want to compile it themselves, and/or modify your code to do something else would have no problems doing so, assuming they had a compiler that works for the code in question. It does not appear to me to be any different than writing code using the Win32 API directly - that can be OSS, too, so why not something compiled with VC++? I didn't distribute the code to the Win32 API, nor to the C runtime library(ies).
Re:Just use the GIMP (Score:3, Insightful)
a physically handicapped or lame person.
a limp.
a feeble or contemptible person.
Performance and functionality issues aside, I can't even bring it up in any kind of social setting without first having to apologize for the name.
Re:Network Freedom. (Score:2, Insightful)