slowjane wrote:I think what the general idea for a project like this would be to polish Krita as a whole:

- Stability / bug fixing
- Optimization
- Redesigning UI where needed
- Reworking / improving features that aren't up to par
- Removing features that might not be all that useful
etc.

Devs would break the categories down into individual features, and then divide those into - for example - main goal and stretch goal items of a Kickstarter campaign. Perhaps a platform like KDE's own, Patreon or gofundme are better options in this case, though.

Making a silly suggestion here, but I guess it could be marketed as developing "New Krita". With the addition of both proper vector tools and even animation, "finalizing" the software into something like 'Krita Studio' is... an idea, at least.

Yes. Something like this for me would be great. Again, lets see what most of people think about it.

Well, I kind of feel that there's support for this idea. And the deity knows, after racing forward, adding features, rewriting big chunks of Krita for three years or so, we do need to regroup a bit and fix bugs, polish (which is a polite way of saying, finish) some of the new features, work on performance. We might need to do some bigger refactorings -- the way brushes, gradients and so on are loaded right now is hopelessly primitive, with coding dating back to the last millenium.

Of course, we still need to finish the SVG, vector tools, text tool and scripting work before we can begin on this!

But I'm beginning to get ideas on how to present this so we can actually raise funds. It actually reminds me of our first fund raiser, for Lukas Tvrdy. We were in a similar situation, back then we had just ported from Qt3 to Qt4, and now from Qt4 to Qt5. That gives instability. Back then, we had just added a bunch of features, and now we've done the same. Back then, the message was, the volunteer developers can go on doing fun features, but Lukas will be paid to fix bugs, increase stability and improve performance. And that work led to the 2.4 release, which was the first one acknowledge to be usable for professional work.

boudewijn wrote: ...polish (which is a polite way of saying, finish) ...

Got it and added to my dictionary.
cheers
Alex

I've talked to tons of people in art communities about Krita, and by far the number one complaint was stability. Many people said they tried it, but had issues/bugs and so they abandoned it. As far as my experience goes in talking with these people the general tune is "Give us stability, not new shiny features".

So I absolutely agree that focusing on stability would be the best thing to do after 3.1 is out.

The second most common complaint I hear is about performance. Stability and performance together have been named by lots of people I talked to as the reason why they are not using Krita. Some even said they would switch to Krita permanently, was it not slow and unstable for them.

So yes, please do this!

If the kickstarter goodies are such a bother, do you think it is necessary to have so many of them? They are supposed to be symbolic gifts, so perhaps we do not need to offer such a great variety like last time. If I remember well, there were stickers, usb sticks, shortcut sheets, t-shirts, calendars..

And yes, as mentioned above I agree that a campaign "Let's make Krita faster (stabl-er?) than Krita" can go a long way.

Hey Boudewijn!
Again, sorry for the people who felt offended by my "rude" words. I will stay away from writing here, to not make this happen again!
EDIT: Probably I am far way from understanding how to develop and merchandise a software. Got it.
Thank you what you guys offer me these years with this project...and as I promised I will contact you asap for finishing my duties.
All the best!
Alex

AlexSabo wrote:Hey Boudewijn!
Again, sorry for the people who felt offended by my "rude" words. I will stay away from writing here, to not make this happen again!
EDIT: Probably I am far way from understanding how to develop and merchandise a software. Got it.
Thank you what you guys offer me these years with this project...and as I promised I will contact you asap for finishing my duties.
All the best!
Alex

Alex... I don't think there was anything rude in what you said! Honestly, I think everyone in this thread is in complete agreement! We've made huge stride, functionally, with Krita over the past couple of years. There are still some big things to do -- vector, text, scripting, resource management -- but all of those are meant to replace existing, broken things. And then we need to spend time to focus on finish, polish, stability. But that is part of the normal life-cycle of free and open source software.

Then the discussion moved a bit, because, well, this must be paid for. Not much, Krita development is astonishingly cheap, but there must be money, so we must find a way to bring this message and get the world to open its wallets. That's going to be interesting, but I think it's also going to be possible. In the past couple of years, we did kickstarters, and for those "rewards" are needed. People expect them -- but they cost a lot of money, and while fun to create, also cost a lot of time.

For the last kickstarter, we'll need at least 6000 euros to create and send out the rewards! One reason is that we allocated money to pay artists for their work, because I firmly believe that working for the exposure is nonsense: good work merits a recompense.

But then I burned out in my day job, and started working full-time on Krita myself again, and that doubles our expenses... It's a difficult problem, but one which we'll solve.

Hey Boudewijn
I understand, especially the burnout part. The rewards including the artist part, no comment because I did this in early post.
Wish you a Happy holidays!
Alex