I don't think it's the $5 app you would need to worry about, but rather the possibility that Microsoft or Google might come along and release a free version (ahem, VS Code and every $$$ IDE out there) that matches or exceeds Serif's apps abilities (they could do this even without an open Affinity format). Sketch opened their format, and I believe they're still doing just fine. Lots of text editors can now edit Word docs, but AFAIK Microsoft is still doing fine with Office. It's possible, but with all of the free/cheap alternative PDF viewers/editors available today Adobe should be seeing the Acrobat side of its business failing (it's not). Now who will pay $50 when they can pay $5? The Affinity file format becomes the industry standard and Affinity the company is in bankruptcy. The way the world works is that someone uses the Affinity file format to make and market extremely cheep software. everyone being everyone who is committed to ensuring that the standard remains working for them. Throwing a prompt upon opening stating that 'this is a Affinity2022a/x file, and the following features are currently unsupported in this application:…' would be a great start.Īs we learned with HTML5, a standard need not be fixed in time, but rather a living standard that evolves over time to meet the needs of everyone within an ever changing environment. Much like the PDF standard has different flavours (all of which can be opened by any application supporting PDF, but not all of the features required by a PDF may be supported), there's no reason an open 'Affinity' standard couldn't have different versions, each supporting different specific use cases and/or features that may not be supported everywhere. So then, the more unique the applications are, the less likely a standard file type could be achieved, even if the various companies wanted to do this. I believe an issue preventing this … is that if a company innovates with a special effect, feature, etc, the file standard may not be able to capture that detail.

Illustrator affinity