How would you undermine open source software? (feddit.uk)

submitted 4 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) by Wudi@feddit.uk to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

You are a senior executive at Adobe.

The CEO of Adobe summons you in his office.

You are in charge of creating a secret task force. The goal is to systematically undermine open source software such as Krita, Inkscape, Kdenlive or GIMP. You have a $50 million budget. Nobody in the company knows about this project except you and Adobe's CEO.

What would you do?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 hours ago

Dropping all of that budget to art universities to have them teach Adobe software primarily. Inkscape, Kdenlive and GIMP do not have the funds to compete in this way, and once people learn a software to do their job, it becomes really hard to switch. Sure, enthausists can learn other open software, that's not my target audience. My target audience is the one that uses such software to earn their money, and most of them will pursue higher education before doing so to learn their tools better, and Adobe will make that money back really easily with their subscription plans.

[-] iatenine@piefed.social 5 points 2 hours ago

Despite answering almost the inverse of the question, this is the correct answer

You can spend infinite money undermining infinite competitors but software companies live and die on industries and professionals being entrenched in their ecosystem

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026

7 points (63.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

39933 readers

950 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.