"Canva, the high-flying Australian design and visual communication startup, announced today it was acquiring Affinity (formerly Serif), a creative tools company based in the U.K. Bloomberg reported that the deal was worth several hundred million pounds (approximately $380 million U.S.), and the company confirmed to TechCrunch that the number was accurate."
On the topic of #Affinity and #Canva, there is a new statement out today. Registered users probably got the email as well.
For now, I suggest we extend the Affinity team our continued support and love, while holding them to their pledge. They have done right by the graphics community this far, and deserve the benefit of doubt. We'll be watching them closely.
I would have been more at ease if it was Affinity buying Canva though 🙂
My pessimism for the Affinity acquisition was perhaps too strong yesterday?
Today I got this in my email, four pledges - here is a quote from the first
"If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity."
If they can stick to pledge 1, of always offering a perpetual license, then I can be happy with that.
For the community who is saddened and skeptical of #Canva’s acquisition of Serif, #Affinity’s parent company, here is a place to get started with alternatives that highlight some proprietary but mostly Free Open Source Software (#FOSS)
Some facts might have changed, like #Ocenaudio is available on all platforms now. Enjoy and contribute however you can!
Achtung, die #Affinity-Serie, die ich bisher gerne als Alternative zur Adobe CC empfohlen habe, ist von #Canva gekauft worden. Eine Integration von „KI“ und eine Umstellung auf ein Abo-Modell in künftigen Versionen ist daher wahrscheinlich. 😩
Timeline blowing up today with the news of #Canva puchasing #Affinity. Posts are pouring in, written in SO many languages. ALL of them worrying about yet another good software suite falling victim to #enshittification and a license model moving from perpetual to monthly subscription.
Users universally loathe subs and we have all seen this story play out before. Nobody trusting the "no changes planned at this time" message.
A sad state of affairs when we all now EXPECT to be worse off shortly.
With #Canva purchasing the Affinity apps, there’s a lot of gloom and doom out there — from myself included. I use Affinity apps a lot and don’t want them to have a new corporate dominatrix.
However, I’ve not much experience with Canva (a bit, but not much)
Here’s the question: is it as crap as it appears to be on first impression?
Anyone still think those one-time #affinity licenses are here to stay after the #canva acquisition? (See https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-press-release/) Any guesses how long before Affinity users are training Canva's mass-market product to replace them? The only safe harbor for ownership of your work, data, and tools is #opensource. It's not too late to learn and contribute to @inkscape@GIMP@krita@Blender et al
Just saw that #Canva bought #Affinity apps. Canva is entirely a subscription model. One of the big things about Affinity is that is is not a subscription model. The way the press release reads, it seems like Affinity will become a subscription model. You can count me out of that should it happen.
Pues nada, #Canva compró #Affinity. Si con ello van quitando o desaventajando el acceso a las licencias de pago único de sus programas de edición a favor de suscripciones mensuales es probable que bastante gente recaiga en programas de #Adobe.
Actually, I did not see a single positive reaction anywhere. Not on the forum, not on Mastodon, not in the comments of their YouTube video. I quickly checked the bird site, too. And a few news sites with comments. Not one happy user to be seen.
The tone is: Shit! This means subscription. Once it is subscription, there is no reason not to use Adobe.
Und hier die schlechte Nachricht des Tages: #affinity wurde von #canva aufgekauft. Nichts gegen Canva, deren Tools sind erstaunlich.
Aber die Zeiten mit extrem entspannten Einmal-Lizenzen bei Affinity dürften bald vorbei sein - lieber jetzt noch zuschlagen.
Mit Sicherheit wird das auf ein Abbo-Modell umgestellt werden 😔
Affinity has been bought by Canva, to compete with Adobe.
It was of course a matter of time before Affinity would outgrow its status of sympathetic small-scale Adobe alternative, and be sold for large proceeds.
Canva is into AI. Hopefully Affinity will get some useful AI-powered image processing tools, like upscalers and denoisers, but Canva will probably add generative shit and introduce subscriptions sooner or later.