Chills

Exactly! He is very careful to say that we can continue to use our perpetual licenses, but not saying that new licenses an be activated nor that V3 will be perpetual. Huge tell in that omission!

I don't know what's worse scenario incorporating some things into Canva, then killing Affinity or slowly turning it into subscription, ad and ai ridden pile of bloated hot shit. The end is on horizon, sadly

You helped us start a movement. Today, that movement becomes a revolution.
Stop yourself, Ash. We're not children. Rhetoric doesn't change reality, nauseating rhetoric just cuts away all credibility, adding insult to injury.
We've seen this twenty? forty? a hundred times? before. A few years ago, German Gravit was acquired by Corel, and Corel wrote "Welcome to the Corel family". It's not a family. I followed the individual German founders' naive optimism on their LinkedIn profiles, but today they are FIRED and Gravit is no longer being developed. A few years later, Corel changed plans, and the little fish discovered the concept of restructuring and downsizing. That wasn't family. It was melting down and minimising.
Serif, I have long urged you to become mature and professionals as a company internally, to survive as a company or to avoid this happening. You lacked the ability or will to do so, you have fundamentally failed in developing the company's culture, structure, and professionalism over several decades and now we see this business bullshit and we well know where it ends! You have simply failed monumentally, and if you had read a bit in both business history books and general history books, then you would know how tragically many revolutions have ended.
I am not afraid of subscriptions like the others. I see far more serious things happening within a couple of years with the products, and I'm starting to take my precautions today. Thank goodness I only use Designer. Maybe I and we are lucky, but precautions are there to ensure the worse scenario.
And to all you fanboys in here I have chided for years: this is where a lack of professionalism ends, and you also have a part in it. I hold the mentality accountable for it ending here.

the statement reads as "nothing changes regarding v2" (pricing , licensing, updates) ...until the next major version (v3?) is released. So, we are maybe one or two years safe?

If they turn it into a subscription, then there's no reason for me to not just go back to Adobe. 
This feels like a nail in the coffin.

Well holy sh#t, I was about to post the old "what chu talkin bout Willis" line, but thought I'd do a quick Google first, and wow 😲

This is HUGE news, and I'm a little miffed we didn't hear it first from the company we have supported and trusted for many years. I personally hate what Canva has done to the design industry, however I can only assume they have the $$ and resources to actually give Adobe a run for their money, on top of that we may finally get image tracing!! Speaking of money, we should prepare for the inevitable subscription-based model, and / or price increase to return the unconfirmed billion-dollar acquisition to investors pockets.

Overall, I'm quite torn about this news, yet not surprised.

The honeymoon is over.

In our experience (before I retired) with ~300-odd Windows servers and about 100+ Linux (mostly RHEL), the Linux servers were more stable, easier to manage remotely, easier to patch (with more reliable patches and less downtime) and less subject to continual upgrade requirements. Plus consolidation generally worked better on Linux, and Solaris for that matter. There were very few "one app, one server, one database" bundles like we had all over the place with Windows and SQL Server. In the rare instances the databases (Oracle and MySQL mostly) were dedicated to an environment it was due to usage requirements and scale, not OS. We could spin up on Linux VM and use if for multiple purposes, but Windows VMs spread like rabbits.

Well, maybe... if taken as a percentage of the user base but that's only a reflection of the Mac's inherent concentration in creative areas -- and relative absence elsewhere. After 2+ decades in corporate IT I can tell you that Macs (note, not iPhones, but Macs) were rare and only when individuals just had to have them, usually for nothing more than personal preference. In a corporate (i.e., AD) context they were a pain to integrate, maintain and support.
The absolute size of a market is what's important to a vendor, since no one survives nor thrives on a large percentage but low absolute customer count. In absolute terms the overwhelming number of Windows users may still provide an equal, if not larger, user population regardless of percentage. That's also a big reason why (among others, like the lack of single de facto standards in many areas) Linux isn't attractive enough to Serif and other desktop vendors. Although the overall number of Linux users -- in one form or another -- is large, it's still small in absolute terms within the creative segment.
And I say all that not as a Windows / MS fan (by any stretch of the imagination). In fact, all things being equal I'd run Linux in a heartbeat -- I did for years. But in the scales of market realities, Linux is currently worth commercially supporting only in the server space, not desktop, regardless of what I and others might wish.

WOW! Pens and pencils.....  I have heard of them in folk tales.  Do you live in a museum ? 🙂
Actually I always have a pen and notebook on me. Through I more often use a propelling pencil.
Though it is amazing me that some teens don't own a pen/pencil and  if it is not on their phones or tablets they have no idea what to do. 
We have created a monster.
 

Many thanks.  In which case, can you please remove my post on this. I have hidden it  (I don't seem to be able to delete it) but as you have resolved the issue it is best that my post containing the original post and my response to it is deleted.

As Staff/Admin, you have no need to apologize for the actions of posters. They are responsible for their own actions.  Besides having been online since 1980 I have a thick skin. 🙂 

To confirm, this new user has been banned from the Affinity Forums for continued abuse of both users and moderators.  They should not be able to return to this thread/site.
Our sincerest apologies for the manner in which this user conducted themselves, as we do not tolerate this anywhere on the Affinity Forums and do not expect our users to be subjected to this type of abuse.
Should you see any further posts in this manner, please report them to the moderation team immediately. Many thanks.

It has come up on the forums a few times that they are using one of the native Microsoft frameworks for their Windows version.  This has been cited as the reason they have not released an ARM build for Windows, because the framework was (at the time) 32-bit only on ARM, and the Affinity apps are 64-bit only.
 
WRONG.
If FFmpeg is compiled to use these codecs it is illegal to use in the USA (and several other countries) unless patent licenses have been obtained.
The codecs themselves are covered by necessary patents - not just the implementations of those codecs.

You don't understand how software works. Certainly not the costs.

WOW the miss use of statistics...
All you can say there is for the games market.
For the desktop/Laptop market, it is a different picture.  However, in all market sectors Linux is 1-4% and Widows/Mac carve up the other 96% in varying amounts  depending on the sector.
In the Graphics/media world the MAC market is large, It was larger than PC's but not now. The Mac market buys commercial software.   So a large part of the MAC market will buy Affinity.
All you have actually shown that Linux users are game playing nerds not graphics developers.
The other "lie" in your statistics is you keep using "Linux"  whereas Linux is a heavily fractured market that has had to develop several "flatpak" systems none of which seem to be actually doing what was hopped.  That FlatPak is even needed highlights the problem. 
 

WOW the miss use of statistics...
All you can say there is for the games market.
For the desktop/Laptop market, it is a different picture.  However, in all market sectors Linux is 1-4% and Widows/Mac carve up the other 96% in varying amounts  depending on the sector.
In the Graphics/media world the MAC market is large, It was larger than PC's but not now. The Mac market buys commercial software.   So a large part of the MAC market will buy Affinity.
All you have actually shown that Linux users are game playing nerds not graphics developers.
The other "lie" in your statistics is you keep using "Linux"  whereas Linux is a heavily fractured market that has had to develop several "flatpak" systems none of which seem to be actually doing what was hopped.  That FlatPak is even needed highlights the problem. 
 

That is also the problem.  What percentage of the 4% of the market want Affinity or any other program.  
Even for developers, a lot of   professional tools that are available on Windows and mac are not on Linux.
For many of the reasons discussed here.
If 10% of the Windows users want Affinity, that is 9% of the market.
If 10% of Linux users want Affinity, that is 0.35% of the market.
The difference is the cost of developing for Windows is far lower per seat than developing for Linux.
It is also a far smoother, and predictable path. A LOT less commercial risk.
 

And there we go... I give you solid engineering, and you come back with "lets agree to disagree"
Nope.
The reality is Linux is not in its current form workable as a major desktop OS,
It is not commercially viable for most commercial developers to target.

My perspective is based on 3 decades of critical systems work on software.
It is constructive because it is factual and based on engineering.
The responses I usually get are religious re Open Source or emotive. Neither of which would hold water in court. 

As for "can Linux be a viable desktop system"?.   Not according to Linus Torvald. He has stated this on the record on multiple occasions. In fact, several times this was at conferences and the videos are on-line.  There has to be some major changes before Linux becomes viable in the same way Widows and OSX are.  Many are organizational as much as technical.

So despite what you hope for, I will side with Linus and say that Linux has a very long way to go before it is a viable general desktop OS.

The problem is that on the desktop, Linux is NOT a major environment. It has less than 4% of the market.

Having worked in critical systems' software for about 35 years, I can tell you Linux has major, serious, problems. 
Firstly, it is a religion.  Its followers evangelize and make exudes for problems  The Faithful accept these excuses, and tend to double down, but in the cold light of day they don't stand up. Just because it is mostly POSIX compliant does not make it a UNIX.   There are POSIX systems that are SIL 3 rated and Do178 DAL A rated. Linux is usually not permitted for any 61508 or Do178 system.

Second, it is very easily intentionally corrupted (and often is).  Apart from accidental problems, hackers, up to state level actors, have intentionally put malware and other problems into Linux. Yes it could be done with other OS but it is far more difficult and would requite the knowledge of the companies involved. In the case of Apple and MS, only the US government could do this.  With Linux, almost anyone can do it. (see the Thompson UNIX back door hack for a method) Before COVID there were found to be multiple ghost contributors to the Linux Kernel. No one knew who they were, and some of their patches did affect kernel security. I believe three were thought to be state actors.
Thirdly, much of the code is appallingly bad. (I have seen good static analysers run over the code)  As Linus Torvald has said, testing is not good and people are adding "cool" things rather than writing solid code. Patches go in without proper regression testing, and neither do they tend to test anything bar the patch.
Next, Almost every Linux is different to the next one. There is no standard distribution.  Most Linux web servers are based on a commercially maintained distribution from a major commercial Linux distribution. The Linux I run here is a version that has been customized, tested and maintained by a commercial company.  It is not let back out into the wild. 

Linux has a very long way to go before it is as robust and safe as other systems.

Looks interesting but I would still prefer Affinity Light-Bridge that Wil let me load a Lightroom catalogue (or convert one to Light-Bridge) and load all the Lightroom keyowrds.. my current set is over 14,000 in an IPTC hierarchical format.

As a point of principal, being a journalist, I won't block people, including @Bit Disappointed  no matter what I think of him.

And you can always activate their post, even though blocked. 
In fact, every now and then I even do reply directly to posts that are on my Ignore List otherwise. Even "annoying" users may have a valid argument at times.
Not sure if this forum software even supports it but I would like to have a feature where I could see how many users are ignoring me. I don't want to know who it is, but just seeing the sheer number would likely make me rethink my own attitude… 

I find that the problem with blocking people is that you still see other peoples replies to them (obviously!), so I find it easier just to ignore posts from certain people and not bother to read them! (Basically anyone who starts off by saying that they are a "professional"; with so much experience, how knowledgeable they are etc and with the attitude of "I am right, because I am me: You are wrong, because you are not me"!)

As a point of principal, being a journalist, I won't block people, including @Bit Disappointed  no matter what I think of him.

It does indeed.
Talking to a friend who does digital imaging: your comments re the Phase One and the Adobe RAW converters are complete bollox.
Also, the DXO converter is superior to both.
The aesthetics you are talking about is editing, and that is something different.

BTW The friend I was talking to this afternoon uses far more expensive cameras than you will ever see, let alone use.