Licensing
Examining the small print.
A ll our chosen software is free. This choice was made partially because the highly respected Adobe Illustrator and CORELDRAW aren’t available under Linux, but also to illustrate the fact that you can get performance comparable to these leading commercial packages without spending several hundred pounds. In other respects, though, there are differences between our five packages.
First of all, they’re not all open source which, while probably not deterring users who just need to create good quality graphics, will be an issue for more technically minded users with more ambitious aims. Inkscape and Libreoffice Draw are open source, the others are not. In addition, in order to use any of the three which are not open source you’ll need to create an account with the publisher. In the case of Google Drawings, that’s just a general Google account which you might already have.
The situation with Gravit might be a concern to some potential users. The product has now been sold to Corel and, while the basic version of Gravit Designer remains free to use, it has now been joined by Gravit Designer Pro (for which you get a 14-day free trial when you sign up) that costs £75/$99 per year. Gravit say it has no plans to discontinue the free version, but questions remain. For example, might some of the features of the free version become available only in the Pro version – or will new features only be offered if you’re prepared to pay for them? It undermines confidence in the long-term functionality.