...It'll dethrone Adobe's successors.
There are a lot of companies releasing free, but not open source, creative software in a bid to compete with Adobe, and it seems like there are more every month. Canva in particular seems to be going out of their way to get free software in the hands of the next generation of creatives, and I think it's going to work pretty well for them.
The title of this post is predicated on Canva's success, and also that Graphite is going to take a long time. I don't think that Graphite is going to take forever, and it's in many ways usable today, but it takes a while to get to a point where the early adopters have embraced a product, and much longer until the rest of the bell curve hops on the bandwagon. I think Canva and its growing arsenal is going to replace Adobe for most hobbyists and freelancers before Graphite has finished winning over the hobbyists, and by the time Graphite is ready for prime time, Canva will be the predominant solution for 2d graphics.
Winning against Canva in the next few years won't be like winning against Intel today - it's like winning against Intel in 2008. It's gonna be an uphill battle against the winner who's still scrappy and determined.
I definitely believe in Graphite's ability to eventually win over its competitors. It's open source, and it has a better vision than any 2d editor I'm aware of, but right now I think it's gonna take a long time before it hits critical mass.
This post doesn't have any real conclusions, I just wanted to share this thought.
