Chills

There is a whole thread on this. In the real world, it is a non-starter.  A hell of a lot of work on multiple constantly moving targets for a VERY small market.
You would never get an RoI ever.    Also, the professionals don't usually use Linux.

Please can linux discussions be kept to the thread on that topic
 

There is a whole thread on this. In the real world, it is a non-starter.  A hell of a lot of work on multiple constantly moving targets for a VERY small market.
You would never get an RoI ever.    Also, the professionals don't usually use Linux.

This announcement was a shock. While Version 2 was oversold, and the recent slow pace of bug fixes and limited feature updates is concerning, I understand there was a lot of V2 under-the-hood work. Regardless, we were more than happy to pay for the Version 2 ‘all options’ package, even though we don’t (at the moment) run Windows machines and the iPad apps remain something to be explored. The value from V1 was so great that buying version two was both a V1 'thank you’ and a V2 encouragement.
The new ownership compels us to examine of our continued use of Affinity software.
Background
We are a small publishing operation creating image-rich print and multi-media ebooks, based in regional Victoria.
We used PageMaker and then the Adobe Creative Suite from its inception until it went subscription. It was not cheap software – $AU600 to $AU800 a seat with half-price updates that, particularly toward the end, were of diminishing worth. We always had the option to skip an update, over the nine years we probably skipped half – skipping more often towards the end. The Australian pricing was at times up to twice that Adobe charged in the US after allowing for the $AUD/$USD exchange rate. It was very expensive software, but as we purchased outright we could partially control the cost. When the subscription ‘model’ was introduced it effectively doubled our already high costs (again charged at much higher prices than to US users), and the moment we stopped paying we would have lost access to our files.
We limped on with CS6 for publishing and drawing while we pivoted photo processing to Apple’s Aperture – based on this being flagship software from a major corporation. This prove to be a major mistake. We also started producing multi-media ePub projects in Apple’s iBooks Author. Another mistake.
Affinity journey
As CS6 faltered, we waited impatiently for Affinity Publisher for our print-based work, taking part in the beta testing. The moment it launched we moved some projects across, even though key features were missing (compared to In-Design) and there were strange bugs. The killer aspect for us was/is the seamless integration of the three apps. This more than compensated for missing functions and ‘managing’ bugs.
When Apple abandoned Aperture we moved to Photo. The first in our string of abandoned software experiences.
For ePub we are still, just, managing to use iBooks Author but expect that ability to ‘break’ any day. We were hoping Publisher would have a robust ePub capability before that final break.
Continue or abandon
The sale is forcing us to review the place for Affinity in our workflows.
We need software longevity. It is not uncommon for us to revisit projects across a decade. We have just spent weeks updating a project from 2014 where the hundreds of photos processed in Apple’s Aperture have to be redone. So my overriding concern is: what are the odds that the Affinity apps will still be viable in 2034?
Our other requirement is perpetual licence software we can to continue to use.
Unfortunately, ‘wait and see’ isn’t a option as we are due to begin several major projects. Do we continue to pour time, effort and capital into projects based on Affinity software or do we look for alternatives now?
This is a summary of our thinking.
Adobe takeover
One of the concerns raised in this thread is the potential for Adobe to buy Canva – given the mood and direction of Australian competition regulators I think this is so unlikely that it does not figure in my calculations.
VC cash grab leading to enshitification
Two of the three Canva founders are on record as holding 18 per cent of the company each, I guess the third also holds 18 per cent – that would give the three a controlling holding. For short-term VCs an IPO allows them to cash out, so there is a path for control to remain with the founders – parties to the assurances we are receiving today – while VCs can grab their cash.
Institutional shareholders
Two of Canva’s institutional shareholders are Australian ‘industry’ superannuation funds that together manage $250 billion of investments. We have two types of super funds – the commercial ‘for profits’ run by financial institutions etc. who make profits for their owners (and generally lower returns for their member) and ‘non-profit’ – the much larger group – of ‘Industry’ funds run only to benefit their members, often union-controlled, and generally long-term ‘ethical’ investors. That Canva’s institutional shareholders are in the second group provides some comfort.
Entrepreneurs with social conscious
Australia has a small group of billionaire entrepreneurial software developers with strong public conscious. Reports suggesting the Canva founders fall into this group – the pack leader is Atlassian co-founder Mike  Cannon-Brooks, a major driver of large renewable energy projects.
Serif’s fate
A few posts have pointed out that Canva acquired Pixabay and Pexels five years ago to support their offering. Both continue to operate as they had pre-acquisition – as stand-alone organisations with previous management – while providing that support to the main Canva product. It is not a leap to see Serif treated this way as the professional offerings would not make sense being folded into the current Canva 'anyone can design' offering.
The driver for Canva is adding ‘professional’ capabilities. In buying Serif, Canva has paid a lot for that capability. Canva senior management are very astute – they have built a $26 billion business from scratch. Dismantling or compromising Affinity software is not an ‘astute’ path, while strengthening it is. And knowing that a very large part of the attraction to Affinity users is perpetual licences, why would you change this major selling point over Adobe?
However, offering AI or cloud-based services requires a subscription to cover the ongoing costs – the template for that is Luminar Neo – you can by perpetual licences with optional AI-based ‘add ons’ with a subscription.
Much of the angst in this thread is around assurances being given by people who are/will not be in a position to deliver/honour those assurances. On reflection, I think there is a reasonable chance those people will remain in positions where they can honour those assurances for several years beyond an IPO.
Our decision
Making the wrong choice – stay or go – will have a substantial financial and resource impact on our business/operation. It is not a decision to make lightly.
For the moment that decision is to delay the major projects until 2.5 is released, see if there is an improvement in bug fixes and ePub features. If so, we will tentatively begin one of our major projects on Affinity software and remain watchful until Version 3.
If not, the search for alternatives will begin.
There are paths for this to be a net positive for Affinity, and we who use the software. I really hope this is the outcome.

There is a whole thread on this. In the real world, it is a non-starter.  A hell of a lot of work on multiple constantly moving targets for a VERY small market.
You would never get an RoI ever.    Also, the professionals don't usually use Linux.

As is your display name 😂

To address some of what is being said on this thread...
Firstly to be clear I'm not a founder, but have been with the company for 25 years. I'm officially appointed as Managing Director of the company, but also use CEO as my title as that is my role in terms of how other countries would view it.
Both Canva and us have made 100% clear we are committing to perpetual licences always being available. That will include V3 or any other future major upgrade of our apps which are released. What's more I will say with Canva's backing we are not under the same financial pressure we would have been to release a V3 anytime soon, meaning those of you using V2 will actually benefit from more features as free updates which may previously have been held back for a V3 if that makes sense. This is of great benefit from an engineering standpoint too as we are far better testing and releasing features in smaller chunks than saving them up to package up as a sellable upgrade. 
https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/27/24113423/affinity-canva-acquisition-pledge-license-price-subscription
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/
As we have made clear there will at some point be a subscription option also which people can take if they choose to. I'm sure there will be additional benefits to that subscription in the future such as asset and document sync, sharing and collaboration and other things which naturally require a subscription as they are features which incur ongoing cost. It may also include other things which can be leveraged with a Canva subscription such as greater stock libraries of images, graphics and fonts. Hopefully that would just be considered reasonable and understandable. There will certainly not be any cynical cutting down of features or limitation of ongoing support in our existing apps just to force a subscription play.
I understand examples of previous acquisitions can make some of you fearful, but they are just historic examples - it has no bearing on what will happen in this case and we are genuinely doing something here which is very different and special. Everything I said on Tuesday, and what both Canva and us pledged yesterday, is 100% true and we are going to stand by it. That includes keeping our entire team here with no layoffs, and continuing to be based in Nottingham. 
If you want to believe this or not is up to you, I'm not sure what more we can say at this point to convince those who doubt it. We'll deliver on this over the coming months and years so whatever is being said right now I know it's going to be all good and assuming you are still using Affinity apps you will be happy with how they have developed and that we have continued to be fair and inclusive with our pricing.
Also to follow on from Patricks point - I can take some of the personal attacks on me, but I have to say some of the conduct on this thread with some of you being very quick to attack other community members just because they hold different opinions is really disheartening to see. You can absolutely give your opinion on this deal for sure, and we are happy to leave this as an open forum within reason, but that does mean being courteous to other forum members and not just repeating the same points over and over.
Thanks,
Ash
 

Of all the people I know who have sold software companies, only one (a German) has acted in the way you describe.  He took a lower cash deal to ensure safeguards for the staff.  He also ensured agreements his company had made with others were upheld.   All the others (approaching double figures) took the money and ran. 
As for "insist on a major shareholding"  shows you have never run a company as a director-shareholder. That would never happen, usually it is a total buy-out. Even if you continue working for the new owners, you probably only get a small shareholding. Also, it is usually impossible to dictate terms after the sale. They buy it, they can do what they like with it.

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

As the articled cays "Gary Bates, 54, and Jim Bryce, 59,".......  "have banked more than £100 million after they sold their graphic design software company to Canva, of Australia, in a deal worth “several hundred million pounds”.
So tell me what would you do if you were in your mid-late 50's, and you were offered £50million ($62 Million USD)  for your company?
After several decades of long, hard struggle, I suspect 99% of us would take the money and walk to the limo.
The other comment of note is "More than three million professional designers use Affinity," Affinity is aimed at and used by professionals. Unlike Canva, which is aimed at amateurs.   All we can hope for is Canva wants to push up the market. This is why there won't be an affinity Video. A-Canva can increase the Affinity portfolio, things like a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that ties the current apps together but a video edit program to compete with the current pro NLE's is well outside the scope.  Especially as Affinity needs to sort out it's stills RAW converter first. .    

No.   When they push out a subscription model to the millions of Canva users, it will have two effects,
1 They will gain more Canva users than affinity users they loose. So Canva won't care about the original Affinity users.
2 Affinity/Serif will become Canva/amateur programs and move out of the pro/semi-pro market they were gaining ground in to stay firmly in the highly unprofessional market home user market.  
(and 3 Adobe will breathe a sigh of relief. )
It will be interesting to read the history of Serif /Affinity on Wikipedia in a year or two.
 
As suggested by others, I have now adopted the Angry Cat Avatar as a protest about all this.
That is why there are more angry cat avatars in this thread, I recommend others follow suite.
 

Not always.  When BMD brought Da Vinci Resolve they kept the same team and it is still, largley, in place. They brought the price right down and added Fusion and Fairlight Audio and really improved the features and dropped the price again (perpetual license with free updates for life) and did a free version.

Not always.  When BMD brought Da Vinci Resolve they kept the same team and it is still, largley, in place. They brought the price right down and added Fusion and Fairlight Audio and really improved the features and dropped the price again (perpetual license with free updates for life) and did a free version.

Not always.  When BMD brought Da Vinci Resolve they kept the same team and it is still, largley, in place. They brought the price right down and added Fusion and Fairlight Audio and really improved the features and dropped the price again (perpetual license with free updates for life) and did a free version.

Todays press release statement was very telling:

"If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it" - So basically, a subscription model is coming and this is how it will work: 

(a): Perpetual model for those who prefer it - This is code for, right pleps, now that we are ultra rich and most of the future trajectory responsibility has been taken out of our hands by Canva, we pledge to you, yes you, you working class s&"m, that you will still be able to purchase 'Photo', Designer' and 'Publisher' but it will not be as feature rich, you'll have some access to a few useless tools that won’t really changed your workflow in the slightest but thanks for being a good dog and rolling over for us with your money

(b): If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model - We want to hoard as much money as we can just like Adobe, this is the future model that we want implemented for the novelty of using our premium versions of 'Photo', Designer' and 'Publisher', which will be jam packed with feature rich tools to excelerate your workflow, again, Canva is our shield to hide behind, blame them not us if you dont agree.... CAUSE WE'RE ARE LOOOOOOADED

Neither can I see any reason why they can't do it.  If you can do critical systems SW across 4 countries with 4 different languages (India wasn't one of them) I am sure they can do IT sw between 2 countries speaking the same language.  As noted some things like variable font support can probably be encapsulated in to one area of code.

I spent half my working life in software development, on projects large and small.
These deals never, ever work out. All that stuff about "transferring technology", "synergy", "joining the family", and "adding functionality" is just leveraged execs blowing smoke as they collect bonuses and sell stock.
What actually happens is that after a few months the key developers are gone, they're impossible to replace, and the product becomes a zombie.  There might be a pathetic "feature release", and updates to run on the latest OS versions so sales can continue, but any faith in a more glorious future is misplaced. 
 
And with that I'll stop commenting. Good luck to those of you heavily invested in this tool, I hope to be proven wrong.
 

Not always.  When BMD brought Da Vinci Resolve they kept the same team and it is still, largley, in place. They brought the price right down and added Fusion and Fairlight Audio and really improved the features and dropped the price again (perpetual license with free updates for life) and did a free version.

Yes, that's an important consideration. 
But there are areas where a new group of developers could help, such as Variable Font support, or Scripting, or RTL support, which may offer large functional areas that can be largely isolated so they can be worked on separately and on their own schedules. That can mitigate the effects that Brooks discussed. 

What was said by Ash yesterday was, "There are genuinely no plans for us to remove the availability of our apps to purchase as a perpetual licence. I will say it is possible in the future there may be an optional way to have them via a Canva subscription plan (which could also include other integrations with Canva / cloud services which you would not get with the perpetual version). But it’s very early days and there isn't a firm plan on that."
So whilst those assurances by Ash  yesterday and today (presumably after Canva cleared them in Australia)  are what he believes today.... next month it may all be different.  The Worry for me is the suggestion of a two tier system, subscription with more features and integrations (with Canva) and the perpetual with fewer features.  Will the perpetual loose the integration with the Stock libraries. The [Canva] Pixababy and Pexel? 

This does remind me of the Adobe pledges to keep Lightroom standalone.   Which technically they did.  V6.14 perpetual licences still work.  But they stopped all support for it a couple of weeks before google changed the Maps API and LR V6.14 maps stopped working.  The Fix was in the LR CC versions  before it happened. You can still move LR V6.14 from computer to computer, but if you hit the limit, it can take you all day to find someone at Adobe to talk to someone who will reset the installation count.  However, for all intents, the stand alone Lightroom is dead.  Adobe would not even discuss it in a face to face meeting a couple of weeks ago.
So  whilst the intent is there, I think that for many of us who have been burned by the likes of Adobe and are getting déjà vu, we are going to be somewhat sceptical until we see what actually happens.    The Good News is that for the foreseeable future by V2 Affinity apps will continue to work just as they did last week.

PS if that Affinity-Canva post means what it says about taking Affinity forward.... We do need a Lightroom replacement/DAM for Affinity. On perpetual licence to match the other apps.

No.   When they push out a subscription model to the millions of Canva users, it will have two effects,
1 They will gain more Canva users than affinity users they loose. So Canva won't care about the original Affinity users.
2 Affinity/Serif will become Canva/amateur programs and move out of the pro/semi-pro market they were gaining ground in to stay firmly in the highly unprofessional market home user market.  
(and 3 Adobe will breathe a sigh of relief. )
It will be interesting to read the history of Serif /Affinity on Wikipedia in a year or two.
 
As suggested by others, I have now adopted the Angry Cat Avatar as a protest about all this.
That is why there are more angry cat avatars in this thread, I recommend others follow suite.