Right? Also one "hack" I use quite a bit is to subscribe for when I need a tool and then unsubscribe when I don't. I use privacy.com to create virtual credit cards that can only be charged once, or a certain amount, or for a certain period of time.
Of course you'll need to backup your data, but honestly that's good practice anyway. I just search Google to ensure the service makes it easy to unsubscribe and easy to export your data.
Many projects have phases where you use certain tools extensively—no sense in continuing to pay for say an online video editor on the months you aren't, well, editing any video.
Lets say I wanted to make a simple ball bouncing animation using Rive for my app. That would take me around 8 minutes to make. Rive editor is an online tool so I'd have to pay $39 constantly to have access to it if I wanted to adjust it at some point as the data is stored online.
Lets say I wanted to create a more complex animation. That might take me 2 days. But I've been forced to pay for the entire month and I need to pay forver to have access to it if I cancel.
It's the market distortion created by people who work for free and expect to get stuff for free
It seems like OSS is more and more bigcorp making money anyway so probably that perception will keep shifting until we're back to normal conditions and OSS developers will be able to earn a salary from their work.
Who said anything about free? Have you used Rive Designer? It's $39 per month for a basic animation DCC tool, which is based online and your files are locked away so you can only alter them if you keep paying perpetually. For a solo developer doing basic animation now and then, the price is absolutely insane for the stuff you get out of it.
> Edit* $39 per month if you don't pay for an entire year in one go. Wtf haha, anyone actually paying this for basic solo-dev work?
Out of curiosity, how much do you expect to make for your basic solo-dev work?
Very often I find that devs' attitude when it comes to their own work is "I deserve a six figure salary/equivalent sales" but when it comes to other people's work, that flips to "software should be free". I have zero idea where the salaries are supposed to come from then.
The amount they are charging for this product has no relevance to the expected payout for any future basic solo work.
Lets say I wanted to make a simple ball bouncing animation using Rive for my app. That would take me around 8 minutes to make. Rive editor is an online tool so I'd have to pay $39 constantly to have access to it if I wanted to adjust it at some point as the data is stored online.
Lets say I wanted to create a more complex animation. That might take me 2 days. But I've been forced to pay for the entire month and I need to pay forver to have access to it if I cancel.
It seems to be just the very basement level of an open source Rive-type project. You would need to build the runtime around this renderer and then of course the authoring app. It would still be quite a lift, but hey, success does start with high-performance vectors.
More likely, I see perhaps other projects with vector-rendering needs (in-game UIs, video creation tools, svg tools, etc) perhaps studying or adopting the render to make their own graphics more performant.
But to answer your question on "who pays for this?" I can raise my hand and say "I do!" and it's a great value. But just like Copilot probably isn't the best monthly investment if you're not doing quite a bit of coding, Rive probably isn't the best investment if you aren't doing quite a bit of animation.
Edit* $39 per month if you don't pay for an entire year in one go. Wtf haha, anyone actually paying this for basic solo-dev work?