Hi,

I'm new on this forum but I have been using Inkscape for several years now (started in 2005 or 2006 I don't remember exactly) and I have been using it professionnaly for a little bit more than 2 years.

I think it is an amazing software but it has certain bugs that bother me quite much (the biggest issue for me being this one, reported 2.5 years ago and still not fixed in the new version).

I don't have enough time to fix bugs by myself, so I was wondering : is it possible to buy a bug fix?

Welcome to the forum

Hhhmm....I'm not sure. I don't think it's prohibited by the license, although I could be wrong. Of course you can make a donation to the Inkscape project, but I don't think you can earmark the donation for a particular use. I think when people really want a particular feature, they try to join the development team, and write the code for it.

You're probably more familiar with the bug than I am. But I have the impression that it's the fonts, that cause the delay in loading. I seem to recall The GIMP (another open source graphics app) having that problem, as least at one time in the past. So it may be somewhat unavoidable for open source apps. I don't consider loading time a serious delay, but if I had more fonts installed, I might have a different opinion. Anyway, I wonder if there would be a way to use Inkscape without the fonts? Although I suspect you may need the fonts. What if you used the portable version of Inkscape? I don't know much about it, but I have the impression it runs on something like a flash drive. I'm just thinking that maybe it wouldn't need to access your installed fonts, and therefore start more quickly. Yeah, I don't know, I'm just trying to think outside the box.

Well, I'll be interested to follow this discussion

From the Inkscape site itself:

What License is Inkscape released under?

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 [2]. In short, this means you are free to use and distribute Inkscape for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without any restrictions. You are also free to modify the program as you wish, but with the only restriction that if you distribute the modified version, you must provide access to the source code of the distributed version.

So anyone can hire a programmer to modify the existing code to fix bugs or make his own bespoke version. But, if you distribute the resulting software, you must also distribute your modified source code (this also means that the hired programmer cannot take the source home and leave you with only the executables...).

Now, in practice:
- programmers qualified enough to do this sort of fixes aren't exactly cheap
- bugs that linger like this are usually the hard to fix ones

You may find that your dentist's bills are, after all, very reasonable

Hello,

brynn wrote:Welcome to the forum

Thanks!

brynn wrote:Hhhmm....I'm not sure. I don't think it's prohibited by the license, although I could be wrong. Of course you can make a donation to the Inkscape project, but I don't think you can earmark the donation for a particular use.

There are many paid developpers that work on GPL software so, no, I don't think it prohibited by the license.

I thought about a donation, but, as you say, I can't assign it to a particular use.

brynn wrote:I think when people really want a particular feature, they try to join the development team, and write the code for it.

I'm myself a developper, so that's true I could join the development team to fix bugs, but the problem is I don't have so much time.

brynn wrote:You're probably more familiar with the bug than I am. But I have the impression that it's the fonts, that cause the delay in loading. I seem to recall The GIMP (another open source graphics app) having that problem, as least at one time in the past. So it may be somewhat unavoidable for open source apps. I don't consider loading time a serious delay, but if I had more fonts installed, I might have a different opinion. Anyway, I wonder if there would be a way to use Inkscape without the fonts? Although I suspect you may need the fonts. What if you used the portable version of Inkscape? I don't know much about it, but I have the impression it runs on something like a flash drive. I'm just thinking that maybe it wouldn't need to access your installed fonts, and therefore start more quickly. Yeah, I don't know, I'm just trying to think outside the box.

I don't know if GIMP had this problem in the past, but the fact is that, for now, GIMP 2.6 starts fast (didn't test version 2.8 yet). Inkscape is the only software that is so slow starting up. I know this is caused by the fonts because :

1. it's written on the bug report, i'm not the only one that suffers from the bug ;
2. I tried uninstlling the fonts once, and Inkscape started fast.

I'm not so much concerned about startup time, but considering that Inkscape needs 1 minute and 34 seconds to start I think it begins to become a problem (Libre Office Writer needs ~3.5 seconds and GIMP needs ~4 to 5 seconds on my machine).

Maybe I don't really use all the fonts that I installed, maybe I could try a portable version (I tought it was Windows-only, is there a linux portble version?) but, still, I can use all the fonts on LibreOffice Writer or Gimp and they are not slow to start so this is a Inkscape issue.

But, well, I was talking about this bug in particular because it is one that bothers me quite much but my question was a more general one about fixing bug or having a new feature by paying a developper.

ofnuts wrote:From the Inkscape site itself:

What License is Inkscape released under?

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 [2]. In short, this means you are free to use and distribute Inkscape for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without any restrictions. You are also free to modify the program as you wish, but with the only restriction that if you distribute the modified version, you must provide access to the source code of the distributed version.

So anyone can hire a programmer to modify the existing code to fix bugs or make his own bespoke version. But, if you distribute the resulting software, you must also distribute your modified source code (this also means that the hired programmer cannot take the source home and leave you with only the executables...).

I have absolutely no problem about the bugfix to be integrated into Inkscape's code. There is no need to fork it. I want the bugfix for myself but I want it for Inkscape's community too, because Inkscape is a great software that helped me a lot and I'd like to help it too.

ofnuts wrote:Now, in practice:
- programmers qualified enough to do this sort of fixes aren't exactly cheap
- bugs that linger like this are usually the hard to fix ones

That's the main reason I came here to ask the question As I just said, I'm myself a developper, and when I think about what amount of money I would charge someone asking me to fix a bug in Inkscape, I think that I'd rather do it by myself. Then I think that if I do it by myself I don't have time anymore to work on my client's projects so I don't earn money, so the the problem is not solved.

What would be cool is to pay one of Inkscape's main developpers to do this, because they know the source code like no one else and they are already working on it for free, so that would be a great way for them to monetize their hobby.

ofnuts wrote:You may find that your dentist's bills are, after all, very reasonable

It's great that you are even considering donating such a large sum to the Open source community rather than buying the newest versions of the entire Adobe suite, several times over....

Hello Matthieu,

Here in China, developers are relatively cheap and that might be the option for this case. The problem here off course would be to find coders that have knowledge of Inkscape (nill) so they'd need some time to get into it. However, if you manage to describe in some detail your requirements, discuss this with the dev team and then set a Prize!!! for solving your problem, we post this on some web forums around here and see if there would be a reaction to it.

This may be a way to get a number of people to work on the problem. They could either sign up as a team to cooperate on it, or work alone, with a winner takes all contest. That way we may be able to get some competition on such fixes. C++ is a language they know rather well here as it is taught to every first year student at university regardless of their major. Python is not all that familiar though, so I would try to focus on C++ tasks.

If the devs would support such a happening by declaring a winner, this might be a way to get some attention to the whole project. We could set a Prize in cash from donations such as yours and create a list of honor for all competitors. I have no cash or sufficient skill to do the coding, but I can make some time to organize the event.

I guess that doing it this way would be within the limits of fairness to the devs that are often working on fields of interest, have no time for it or deem it not important enough to work on. The least it could do is give some PR to the project and get people involved.