
Call for help: fund GIMP development and Libre animation - avaika
https://girinstud.io/news/2017/10/call-for-help-fund-gimp-development-libre-animation/
======
miduil
GIMP initially started as an university project, that, by now, has been
developed for almost 20 years. Just in the past seven days there've been 9305
LOC additions and 3535 deletions, according to the github mirror [0].

It's one of the most important projects for the open source desktop, for
example GTK (formerly GIMP Toolkit) is one very important outcome.

Please support GIMP, because it's more than 'just' a Photoshop alternative.

[0]:
[https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/compare/master@%7B1507386622%7...](https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/compare/master@%7B1507386622%7D...master)

~~~
jqcr98vw
> it's more than 'just' a Photoshop alternative.

Can you elaborate on that? With Photoshop being relatively cheap to use only
when I need it, I have a hard time supporting an Open Source tool that never
seems to meet my needs. What am I missing?

~~~
krapp
Photoshop, along with other Adobe software, now uses a subscription based
model which users may not be able to justify, unless they're a student or
professional constantly using it and recouping the cost.

Adobe also links all of your software and access to your data with a single
account password which the company has proven incapable of managing securely.

So those are two good reasons to use Gimp - no recurring fees and no worries
about the cloud. Although the best reason _not_ to use Gimp, albeit an unfair
one from Gimp's point of view (but still relevant,) is the degree of lock-in
to proprietary Adobe formats and tools that pervades the graphics, editing and
design professions.

>I have a hard time supporting an Open Source tool that never seems to meet my
needs. What am I missing?

Simply having a decent, free alternative to Photoshop should be worth
something.

~~~
colejohnson66
> Adobe also links all of your software and access to your data with a single
> account password which the company has proven incapable of managing
> securely.

I’m not defending the Creative Cloud model, but you don’t _have_ to save your
data in the cloud. It’s just like how Apple has iCloud and Microsoft has
OneDrive. Sure, you can save your data in the cloud, but you don’t _have_ to.

------
thinkloop
I rag on gimp all the time, yet I never end up buying photoshop, and it always
gets the job done. We have a co-dependent love-hate relationship that will
probably last all time.

I'm constantly shocked at how massive, important open source projects turn out
to have so little funding. It's hard to tell which ones are Mozillas (super
rich and sophisticated), and which are OpenSSL and Gimp (grossly underfunded
working out of a bedroom). I imagined gimp being a 50 person team in an
office.

(started supporting gimp)

~~~
danieldk
_I 'm constantly shocked at how massive, important open source projects turn
out to have so little funding. It's hard to tell which ones are Mozillas
(super rich and sophisticated), and which are OpenSSL and Gimp (grossly
underfunded working out of a bedroom). I imagined gimp being a 50 person team
in an office._

It is shocking, especially because so much of all infrastructure depends on
these projects, especially OpenBSD, GnuPG, OpenSSL, etc. I would absolutely
pay for a 'subscription' where I could, say, spend 20 Euro per month and the
money gets automatically spread over the open source programs/projects that I
use. Things are heading in the right direction with Patreon, BountySource, et
al. but I would like to sponsor on a amount-of-use basis.

~~~
thinkloop
Someone should put up a site that lists the least funded projects per capita
in order: income divided by number of users/utility

~~~
zanny
Problem is no real reputable free software project (in order of rising
significance) downloads, installs, or usage hours because most people that
want liberated software also don't want tracking.

Also, different projects disclose their funding differently (if at all). Just
in this context as an example Krita lists their monthly donations on their
site but Gimp is just considered a part of GNOME - there is a Krita Foundation
whereas Gimp donations go to the GNOME Foundation, so it would be hard given
the Gnome Foundations budget statements to deduce what money is actually going
to Gimp and what amount is coming in to Gimp.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Debian has popcon data, popcon is a default in Ubuntu I think too?

From the man page of popularity-contest:

    
    
           The resulting statistic is available from the project home page http://popcon.debian.org/.
    
           Normally,  popularity-contest  is  run  from  a  cron(8) job, /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest, which automatically submits the
           results to Debian package maintainers  (only  once  a  week)  according  to  the  settings  in  /etc/popularity-contest.conf  and
           /usr/share/popularity-contest/default.conf.

------
AsyncAwait
If you want to support GIMP on Patreon, here are direct links for the key
developers:

\- [https://www.patreon.com/pippin](https://www.patreon.com/pippin)

\- [https://www.patreon.com/zemarmot](https://www.patreon.com/zemarmot)

~~~
hippich
one thing killing me, because credit cards are involved, with $1 it ends up
with $0.35 + 2.7% + 5% fees. So for small monthly contribution of $1 developer
gets $0.59...

there is clearly market for something more efficient...

~~~
progval
Liberapay is a libre alternative for Patreon (with anonymous patrons and no
reward) with much lower fees for bank transfer/automatic debit [1], as it is
funded via donations

[1]: [https://liberapay.com/about/faq](https://liberapay.com/about/faq)

~~~
Marmot2017
And you can start pledging to a project before they have joined.
[https://liberapay.com/on/twitter/GIMP_Official/](https://liberapay.com/on/twitter/GIMP_Official/)

------
Jdam
GIMP only always remembers me how much I miss Paint.Net on my Mac. Just last
week I had to do some image manipulation. Since pretty much all Paint
derivatives for Mac suck hard, I preferred to spin up a Windows EC2 instance,
install Paint.Net and get the job done, instead of using this UX clusterfuck
named GIMP.

~~~
tomc1985
UX clusterfuck? How?

So it's the same UI it's had for years. Just because it isn't modern and
pretty doesn't mean it's a clusterfuck. I personally find Gimp easier to get
started with than Photoshop, for one...

~~~
pmontra
If the benchmark is Paint maybe he means that GIMP is too complex for what he
needs, so the UI is inevitably too complicated.

Pinta [1] is a simpler alternative to GIMP on Ubuntu. I never used it (and
where is the source code?) but it looks similar to how I remember MS Paint. GP
was asking about Macs, sorry I don't know anything about them.

[1] [https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/](https://pinta-
project.com/pintaproject/pinta/)

~~~
ZenoArrow
MS Paint and Paint.NET aren't the same app. Paint.NET is a mid-level image
editing program, somewhere between MS Paint and Photoshop in features.

[https://www.getpaint.net/](https://www.getpaint.net/)

------
stuaxo
There are some really great little fixes that have gone into GIMP as a result
of this project.

A list from 2.9.6 is here -

[https://girinstud.io/news/2017/09/gimp-2-9-6-zemarmot/](https://girinstud.io/news/2017/09/gimp-2-9-6-zemarmot/)

------
jimnotgym
To put this into perspective EUR400 a month is about what 7 seats on Adobe cc
would cost. I hope GIMP users can dig deep. Glad to see this story on the
front page

------
dahoramanodoceu
Im a huge fan of GIMP. If I had money I'd fefinitely chip in. Here's my
emotional support: ___< 3_ __

~~~
jlgaddis
I'm not a GIMP user but I just chipped in a few dollars on your behalf. In the
future, if or when you are able, please consider paying it forward.

------
bryanrasmussen
I would argue that a donation is legally deductible for a business if it can
be tied to a feature request that is then implemented.

~~~
phkahler
And I would donate to GIMP development if I could fund specific feature
development. In particular I want the move to GTK 3 completed, followed
closely by moving to Wayland. Those are already project goals, but I'd want to
influence the priority ;-)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Well I guess I'll be funding anyway, but I expect my argument for a deduction
might be overturned, which if I could fund a feature it wouldn't be. Really
all open source teams should consider this - not that people say I will fund X
if you do Y but rather we intend to do A,B,C 'pay' towards the feature you
want to prioritize.

------
cryo
Just joined on Patreon, using GIMP since +5 years.

------
ckdarby
Can someone explain to me why open source projects don't take on more
'sponsors'?

For example, one of my employers used to use the open source software Chronos.
There is a lot of lacking GPU support in chronos, we opened up an issue and
nobody wanted to tackle it, and in all honesty, if they had an easy way of
getting the core contributors to be paid to add support they would have
considered this.

Fast forward, they had a dedicated internal developer build out a very
specific replacement for our needs.

~~~
jononor
Many* open source projects are ran by volunteers on their spare time. They do
it for the fun of it, and often have a full time job already (possibly writing
software, or not).

Doing sponsored development involves many activities besides coding, that
volunteer contributors might not be particularly skilled at or even interested
in learning/doing:

\- Attracting sponsors, cutting deals

\- Extracting customer requirements, estimating work, project planning

\- Developing things that themselves dont need/want

\- Documenting and reporting on the work done

Some employeers may frown upon someone taking a serious obligation that
sponsored work is, but be supportive of a hobby level project.

It might also complicate your tax situation, and there can be liability
considerations.

Many contributors are also not professional software developers, and may not
feel comfortable promising to deliver specific outcomes.

* these days there are also many open source projects ran by companies, or engineers on company time.

~~~
jononor
Bear in mind that open-source software was much more niche just 5-10 years
ago. It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS,
understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was
_possible_ to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone
for free was rather unorthodox. Best practices in financially sustaining open-
source projects are still developing, and I think we will see much more of it
in the future.

~~~
danieldk
_It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand
it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get
paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was
rather unorthodox._

To me it seems to be quite the opposite, from 1994 to 2004 or so it was very
normal for people to drop 30-70 Euro on a Linux distribution (which were
available in local book stores). I bought a lot of Slackware, Red Hat, SUSE,
and FreeBSD boxes. Some of these distributors hired prominent members of
various communities (X.org, kernel, KDE, etc.) to sponsor relevant projects.

After ~2004 this changed very rapidly. Probably because of: the availability
of broadband Internet, Canonical giving away Ubuntu CDs for free, and the
beginnings of the 'everything should be free'-culture boostrapped by Google
Mail and other services.

------
Kiro
Is he the only developer of GIMP? The text makes it sound like that. What am I
funding exactly?

~~~
stagger87
Both of your questions are answered in the short text. In the first paragraph
he states that he is not the only developer and links a contributor list.
Throughout the text he mentions funds would help purchase a new computer and
help with his everyday bills (rent/food/etc.)

------
sharno
I love what GIMP is doing and it's a not very famous part of open source
software. I'd definitely try to donate as soon as I have enough to support
myself first :)

------
tech4all
I have received a TON of utility and joy from Gimp over the years... Happy to
help!

------
fabrika
It's been 20 years now without any success. Maybe it's time to move on?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
To put some figures to it, Debian's popcon [0] lists it as having 100k
installs (out of 200k 'surveyed' systems). For comparison Steam has 6k
installs in the same survey.

Steam claim to have 67M active monthly [1], and 0.6% linux users; ~40k linux
users.

Guesstimation: if the 200k surveyed on Debian are representative and Steam
installs is a representative sample then we can estimate that if the 6k
installs of Steam represent half of the Steam surveyed Linux users that [3]
~300k people are using GIMP on Linux.

In the popcon survey a fifth of users are regular users.

On other OS users have a wider range of good alternatives IMO, but if we
recall that Linux desktop usage is about 1-4% then we can expect of the order
of millions of other GIMP users.

The number suggest one could call it successful.

[0]
[https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gimp](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gimp),
[https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=steam](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=steam)
[1] [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/valve-reveals-steams-
monthly-a...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/valve-reveals-steams-monthly-
active-user-count-game-sales-region/) [2]
[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)
[3] 40k users of Steam, if half are on Debian-like systems and a 200k sample
of them show 6k steam users that's 3.3 times less; if GIMP then is
underreported to the same amount we can provide a rough minimum actual
installs on Linux.

