After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe
petapixel.com
petapixel.com
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.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-s...
"The other, perhaps more urgent issue is the threat of Adobe’s legal department. The marketing and branding of the software looked a little too on the nose for the multi-billion dollar company to ignore. Semple says he’s ready should Adobe decide to flex its legal muscle.
“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,” he says.
Examples of the software icons Abode displayed on its Kickstarter. “I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”"
Honestly, that statement doesn't sit well with me.
Most sensible business people like to have a generous buffer between themselves and the legal line.
If you make it your business model that you constantly try to test the boundaries legal line, then one day it is going to come back and bite you in the backside. The history books are littered with examples.
It also means in practical terms that most of your $235k is going to disappear on lawyers fees.
Regardless of what this person says, my own experience and knowledge of trademark law tells me he's full of it.
My knowledge of software development seconds that thought, as does my knowledge of the software packages he's aiming to replace.
It's a scam, I'll happily eat my hat if he achieves -anything- close to what he's promising.
So their rip off versions of Tiffany and Co, Pantone, and Mattel presumably failed? Or surely they wouldn't need a kickstarter for this one. Doesn't inspire a ton of confidence in me.
Yeah but a damn company that infringes on Adobe's trademarks has been produced
I’m not sure what has in your mind justified that immensely snarky response.
This is the equivalent of a perked-up overconfident guy bragging about his MMA skills to an uninterested date. This is the equivalent of a Tesla salesperson telling you not to worry because the car will DEFINITELY hit its stated range.
It all means nothing.
Anyone with a measly $200k or thereabouts wouldn’t be looking to waste a single cent of it on unnecessarily legal costs all to…blatantly copy a brand. This is a naive whoever looking to kick up some publicity with a meme vapourware product. Anyway, if a court ruled in Abode’s favour, it would quite frankly be a disgusting perversion of trademark law. It doesn’t pass the smell test at all. Adobe being evil doesn’t change that fact.
https://hypebeast.com/2023/7/stuart-semple-barbiest-pink-mat...
I assume this is the Mattel reference.
Trademark disputes can be won by just not competing in the trademark realm. If Mattel is protective of toys that are a certain pink and you release paint that color they won't/can't come after you.
Bringing out software that is a direct competitor while using a marking similar isn't just harder, it is effectively what trademark was designed to prevent.
Unless you can win a lawsuit where Adobe says "people assumed it was a cheaper version of my normal product made by me" you will lose in court.
Honestly my view is also someone fleccing given the whole Ventablack story being him making a mountain out of a molehill when a manufacturer gave one artist access to avoid having to work with a ton of people on a distraction from their usual work.
Additionally wouldn't GIMP and other open source tooling be good enough if Adobe tools could be cloned for a year's Salary of a Senior Engineer plus overhead?
Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.)
$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.
People will do a whole lot when the incentive is not the paycheck.
People underestimate how much work commercial software takes by many orders of magnitude. This kickstarter is maybe performance art but if they're serious there is no chance in hell they will actually produce software that is actually competitive with an Adobe suite product.
The only downside of Inkscape is that it doesn't properly open and save the most recent Adobe formats other than that I also have no idea why I would need anything more than what Inkscape offers.
Sure the Adobe tools have a lot to explore, a lot of buttons and options hidden in millions of submenus.
But a good portion of computer users have only a limited need for tools like this, no interest in that constant learning curve after major updates and no use for all those advanced features.
Imagine I learned using these tools 20 years ago, and while they heavily improved they still work exactly the same. Every time I meet Photoshop it 180d their design and button placements...
My point is you do not need to feature match Adobe to compete, making it more accessible alone could be a selling point.
> The only downside of Inkscape is that it doesn't properly open and save the most recent Adobe formats other than that I also have no idea why I would need anything more than what Inkscape offers.
Good for you. I can assure you that you'll find thousands of creative workers that will find what's missing from those tools.
> My point is you do not need to feature match Adobe to compete, making it more accessible alone could be a selling point.
That's why GIMP and Inkscape are industry standards that displaced Adobe tools.
Depends where you go. If you go to a CCC event or a Linux shop I am sure they are.
Maybe you're not aware of this thing called equity, and how it's often a part of an offer to a founding engineer..
Adobe is moving at a steady strong pace which one cannot ignore. They don't have ferocity or (sometimes) velocity of a hungry small player.. yet, there aren't any in their space. There's Autodesk (lol) and of smaller in video there is The Foundry (if you want to see exceptionally unproductive, at small scale).
- Figma
- Blender
- Maxon
- Davinchi
- Autodesk
- Stability
Honestly hard to name a company in the space shipping less than Adobe.
- procreate - yes, I agree. They do compete there and procreate is iPad only. Pricing is what sets them apart and Adobe being a bit stupid there
- Figma - yes and it's Adobe now.
- Blender and Maxon are in different space. Unless you consider Blender's subpar video capabilities and Maxon's buying of video plugins (for Adobe programs). Also, Maxon.. come on, talking about stale. C4D "light" is also part of After Effects.
- Blackmagic is in hardware business. Their Fusion (bought) is stale af. AVID might be a better comparison.
- Autodesk - only overlap is between Flame and Lustre. Flame is in another space where they don't compete and Lustre has been stale (just like Adobe's CC offerings, seems both ceeded to free DaVinci Resolve)
- Stability - look at how wonderfully Adobe actually did put out AI and integrated it well with Photoshop!
> Pricing is what sets them apart
Nah the whole app is built on modern technology, Adobes dusty old apps chugging away on single cores struggling to draw a paint stroke are pretty laughable compared to Procreate. All this is stuff Adobe could have shipped 10-15 years ago in Photoshop if they cared at all.
> Blender and Maxon are in different space
It's all the same space, if you're differentiating 3D from 2D design you're living in the past. Besides we're talking about creative tools shipping features so it's irrelevant as long as its a tool.
$235k and 2 engineers is completely different to $4M and 15 employees. Not to mention that it was 5-7yrs before Figma had any revenue.
"While Figma was founded in 2011, the first five years were spent trying to get to product. The company printed its first dollar in revenue in 2017 and will hit $400 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022"
https://futurumgroup.com/insights/adobes-stock-got-slammed-f...
Figma is an outlier. "it's clearly doable to take on Adobe with far less money", he says about one of the fastest growing decacorn startups in history.
Thank you for being condescending. If you expected being a bully might shield you from tearing apart your argument you will be very disappointed.
15 people is a lot closer to two than to Adobe which is the point of my comment you entirely fail to grasp.
Every companies taking out a large companies is an outlier by definition. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist and remains a clear counterexample to your extremely wrong original opinion.
This discussion is finished as far as I’m concerned by the way. You have clearly demonstrated you are not worth talking to. I will let you massage your fragile ego by yourself.
I don't doubt you can make a cell phone app for that money, but something that would compete with Adobe's incredibly polished and well-funded software suite... I'm thinking the odds aren't good at all.
I agree with you that $235K is a small budget to build a serious software though.
But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding. It's basically competing with Adobe at Adobe's game, but with a tiny fraction of the resources. Well, good luck to them, but meanwhile expect to pay Adobe's tax for a few years still...
Even well-established companies once Adobe decides it wants in.
Remember QuarkXPress ?
It was THE desktop publishing software. Anybody who was anybody would use it. They had the monopoly.
Then along came Adobe with InDesign ... Quark are still around, but a shadow of their former shelves.
The creator of the kickstarter lives in the UK. Even assuming the absolute worst of London salaries, you can pay for two developers, full time. If you look at other places in the UK or Europe that aren't overinflated with capital-city-salaries, there are a shitload of talented developers that will cost you anywhere from 50 to 100k a year. Eastern Europe is filled with extremely talented people.
plenty of regions in the US and other nations have many talented developers that are willing to work for far less and make a far better product than what you get for silicon valley wages
Yes there are other nations that have talented developers. But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary.
I'm not going to name names, but if you are thinking about the "outsourcing nations", then I don't know about you, but I think most of us here have experienced the poor quality coding output from those developers. The Quality Control simply is not there, normally because the company doing the outsourcing is too cheap to pay for proper supervision and quality control.
If You can't see that there is a middle ground between impoverished wages and what was quoted above that I can't help you
I can see a middle ground. Most people would probably name it as Europe. And you would have to go looking in Eastern Europe.
And I think you would find, if you are lucky, that a competent European junior-ish developer would not get out of bed for less than 60k Euros (65k USD), a more senior developer would demand more.
And you need more than one or two developers on your team if you're going to be competing against Adobe.
And then you need to pay taxes, pensions, accountants and lawyers.
And then you need to pay other business expenses.
And if you decide you need an office, then god help you ...
The numbers soon add up .... $235k will disappear within the year, probably within a single quarter.
Software development is capital intensive.
So $235k is 200k€ so one developer and one PM, because the dev alone has a brownian behavior concerning progress (unable to take initiative).
That's a very much extreme statement I think you confabulated. Take this developer median data from back in 2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1222324/developers-media... and reanalyze your statement.
And also compared to https://www.reinisfischer.com/average-monthly-salary-europea... where 60k euros a year tends to be above the average monthly salary in many EU countries. And if a junior doesn't get out of bed for less than that, well I have some bad news for them and their expectations.
You won't get qualified devs for much less than 60k around here. Especially since that is the amount of money people expect on their payslips before taxes.
On top of that employers have to pay additional stuff, that won't even make it on the payslip, like parts of the health insurance which are not considered to be parts of the compensation.
Quick Example from Austria:
* Cost to Employer 77k€
* Employee's Taxable Income: 60k€
* Income After Taxes: 40k€
* Childcare and University: 0€
I'm actually in Europe, and EU, but not Schengen (thank you Austria & Netherland governments for the veto vote).
> You won't get qualified devs for much less than 60k around here.
The ridiculous claim was about juniors that won't even approach the job for less than 60k, and I took that information that I found first with a Google search to illustrate that 60k euros is more than the average salary in most EU countries.
Of course you could share more precise numbers from one of your national institutions that reports this information, but on the website listed the monthly average gross salary stated for Austria is around 4540, which comes to 54480 a year.
I could count on one hand the number of junior developers I've encountered that I would call exceptional, and deserving an average salary right from the get-go.
And, stating the obvious: Software developers tend to earn above average salaries.
Let me tell you that you are far off the reality. I live in Paris and junior developers don't get near as much as €60k/year. The 35-40k range is more realistic for juniors, and senior ones can get what, 90k? That's alread considered really good for an engineer here.
Of course you can make six figures, but that implies working for a silicon valley company that hires remotely in europe. And those that have offices in europe adjust their compensation accordingly.
Just for demonstration I looked at Datadog on levels.fyi for the three they accept to show me:
- Paris, $77k-$94k (so €70k-€85k)
- New York $180k (for level 1 SE, senior is through the roof)
Affinity[1] is a good example, I believe that’s created in Europe and its very reasonably priced.
Pixelmator too — based in Lithuania?
You realize that 60k usd after tax is 240k PLN which is like 6.6 times minimal wage?
This is good cash, not top, but good.
Junior people earn 36-120k PLN, so half of that.
The hiring needs to be direct or else the "agency" will eat most of the money and give you 3000$/yr "senior" devs further perpetuating the stereotypes.
With 235k, you can make an incredible 5 people team + cloud costs for an year.
I am doubtful.
Yeah, that’s definitely not your standard coder.
Previous thread where he posts:
If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim.
Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.
I suppose it does give away the cultural difference, but this is one where the Indians (and a lot of others) get it right.
"Five hundred...." is meaningless. "dollars five hundred..." is a useful preliminary approximation.
It would make for a fast mental shortcut in preparation. For example: you need to move an item. How much does it weigh?
Grams… ok, pocket
Kilograms… might need to put it in the trunk.
If a dev cannot be United States centric and condescending, I'm not sure of their worth as an engineer.
Can ask?
Can use?
Can what?
> Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who think nitpicking on every small thing leads to "quality" code?
I hate this crap. Some of the absolute worst code I've seen in my career was written by US programmers working out of tech hubs, as is some of the best code.
> But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary.
You're assuming that all "genuinely talented developers" are motivated solely by money and will move away from home, friends and family for a "decent salary". A salary of £80k in the UK (ignoring london just for a moment), or $100k USD is reasonable for a senior level engineer in the UK, will give you a very comfortable standard of living, and is less than you'd pay a junior in many parts of the US.
> The Quality Control simply is not there
That's not because of an "outsourcing nation", it's because you paid for a shitty outsourcer. See healthcare.gov [0] for a textbook example. Similarly, I've worked with "outsourcing nations" via EPAM with contractors in Mexico, Belarus, California, Hyderabad Romania and Bangkok, and the quality of code has not been tied to the location, it's been tied to QC at the relationship level.
Sure, but code put out by US coders I’ve hired has been consistently better than code that has been outsourced outside of the US.
Obviously, there are “diamonds in the rough” occasionally, but skilled people tend to get snapped up by a recruiter willing to file an immigration form for them very quickly.
I've experienced "poor quality coding outputs" caused by outsourcing in general... regardless if it was abroad or not.
With properly hired employees, in my experience, what they output is actually quite impressive both qualitatively and quantitatively. And their average salary is a fraction of mine, which is in turn a fraction of a US one (I'm West European).
Money alone doesn't make good software.
So a zillion people working on gimp could not do it, while a handful with 250k in funding can?
This is performance art, not a project.
When they can show working progress they can then do more fund raising, or maybe outright sales of the early releases?
Silicoln Valley is living in a bubble. There are millions upon millions of talented developers out there earning a fraction of that but still enjoying a higher than cost of living wage.
They work really well, some things are just the same as in the Creative Cloud, and I'am not missing anything so far.
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.
As a dev, Adobe’s premium tax is irrational.
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.
Affinity has allowed me to not use Adobe for a long time, (until they bought Figma.. but well).
And it seems odd to me to clone very old software in a world that has evolved.
Anyway, always pro having more options, so good luck to them!
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.
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.
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.
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?
Whenever Vantablack was released to the world, the artist Anish Kapoor got exclusive artistry license rights for the pigment. Semple was rather upset about it, so he then made a pigment called "Pinkest Pink" and one of the terms and conditions of buying it is that you agree to never share it was Kapoor.
I don't know what his intention is with this project, but I'm sure it'll have an interesting outcome.
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 know professional designers that prefer Affinity for many projects. They still pay for Adobe, still use Adobe often (and agree that when they need it - Affinity is not yet close), but actually prefer Affinity for some projects.
Now, even taking on Affinity will cost more than a few hundred thou, but if you can get traction the sky is the limit.
One idea would be to fork Gimp, focus mostly on the UI, and allow for all changes to be pulled back upstream. That would essentially turn them into the steward for GiMP, but may give them access to talent that otherwise would be out of reach and that would split the community.
I certainly hope not. I don't think companies should expect to be able to hijack a common word as their company name and then complain when another company uses a different word as its name.
I don't get many of the UI complaints because I have always used Inkscape, so I have the same problem but in reverse. So, I get it.
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.
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.
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.
- $235k is sweet FA
- 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.
It'll be interesting to watch but that funding needs a zero or two added to the end.
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.
Not only that, they cost more than the each of the apps I listed
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> I’ve found an amazingly passionate team of geeks
> 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.
> You can expect:
> 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.
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.
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.