Ask Lemmy

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.

Spam poor quality llm commits from sockpuppet accounts to a bunch of popular projects. Sprinkle in some subtly-buggy contributions from more established accounts. The buggy contributions should not be obviously malicious (not, like, obfuscated credit stealers -- they should just break things). Do this to as many projects as you can without making it super obvious. Prefer projects with few maintainers but a high merge rate. Then, go think about what you did, you bastard.

If I am a senior executive at Adobe, and given this task, I would immediately resign.

It tells me that Adobe feels like GIMP, Krita and Kdenlive is an existential threat, which is just an utter delusion.

It tells me that the CEO is acting on false information, and I don't want to be part of that.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say that I stayed, and I did partake in this stupid endeavor.

I wouldn't do anything to the software projects at all, instead I would have Adobe release a suite of free tools, say 90% stripped down versions of Photoshop, Premiere and Illustrator, they would be very limited, naturally, but they would use the same workflow as the real deal.

That would make people far more familiar with Adobe products and push for their use in businesses.

To be frank, I highly doubt that Adobe cares about what people use at home, what matters is what the businesses use, they are easier and more profitable to go after.

The two killer features that any commercial software has over open source when it comes to business are:

1. Standardization - like it or not, the world is standardized on Microsoft Office, people know how to use it, the format works well between different companies, and it is just the standard, do you want to be the CTO that has to answer to the CEO when the company can't collaborate with other companies because they can't open your files due to you picking Libre Office over the standard? The day to day work comes first, then you can start considering alternatives, in a years long testing program. Same goes for Adobe, do you want to have to answer to the board why a very highly paid marketing department can't work due to you refusing to give them the standard tool? No, you don't, so you get the standard.
2. Support, you probably won't use it ever, but fact is that with commercial software you have an entity you can refer to for help when it shits the bed, or they have a legal entity you can sue if you are pissed off. That last part should not be discounted too quickly, management likes having someone to blame, picking an open source alternative means that the buck stops with you, picking a commercial software means that you can pass the buck to them.

Source: Fifteen years as an IT guy.

Nice try adobe.

Buy the platforms open source projects use and...Wait a minute, MS already did this.

With the advent of AI open source is no longer a threat. Now it is just training data.

I would start a bunch of supply chain attacks to erode the trust and drown them in ai generated "contributions" to make maintainers tired.

Pretending it's a fictional scenario, asking the question in tech-oriented spaces such as Lemmy and Mastodon, then using some of the answers.

Pay a bunch of simps to make posts all over about how they tried switching to linux and/or GIMP but it was too hard and broke all the time, claiming that open source is "just a hobby."

get open source fans on the internet to endlessly discuss and fight amongst each other.

I know, totally unrealistic. would actually never happen, that's ridiculous.

I would submit code I wrote to it

Make arbitrary changes in your file formats every year that breaks any compatibility in as subtle ways as possible.

Fork it, carry on with being FOSS for now, develop a few killer features that everyone will love that would take a small FOSS team years to develop. When it becomes the industry standard, make it closed source. A year later start charging for it.

Easy. Use open source code and licenses to make my software ubiquitous. Convince manufacturers they need my software preinstalled at no cost to them. Once every piece of hardware is on my system, close access to it and say it's for your safety.

become a whisleblower, expose them?

Delete all of my internal databases. Necessity is the mother of invention, so starting at a disadvantage would be a catalyst to churn out even better software!

Clone every repository, start inserting bugs and viruses, then take the open source code and encrypt/obfuscate it and make minor changes

Then release it as a closed source product and have a spin doctor like Steve Jobs tell people mine is better and there are no viruses or bugs so they should switch.

That's the standard playbook, if it works it ain't broke so don't fix it.

I would take a movement whose mission is user freedom and whose arguments relate to morality and twist it so that the only thing that matters is software quality. Now, it's palatable to corporations.

I'm asking this because I'm convinced this is actually happening.

I'd embezzle a bunch of the money, then spend the rest on good-faith contributions to the software in question, insisting that this was just stage 1 of the plan. There is no stage 2.

I think the best strategy is to contribute lots of money and work to promoting and developing free software, improving it and using it everywhere so that it comes to be ubiquitous, used by everyone. That will make it even more of a target for malware authors and therefore lead to its sure demise. We should get started right away.

I'd hire slop writers to make articles saying X open source project got hacked y open. Source project got hacked. Then spam replies on the threads when they get posted to reddit with replies like "this is bad, I'm going bad to BigEvilCorp because they have a fulltime team working security". Itd manufacturer reality for people and eventually it'd shift perception.

Also the articles about projects being hacked dont even have to be real. Misinfo travels way faster than the truth