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I don't understan why some people feel a foolish rush to come and discredit the GIMP devs, and "discreetly" demand that everybody else should invest their money in X or Y project because i like them and they're not GIMP. I dislike the word «shill» but it's a correct description of those people.



I care about the open source graphics community as a whole. Not just Gimp, not just Krita, Blender etc. But the whole ecosystem of Programmers, Researchers and Artists and the health of the software that brings those people together.

After more then a decade of failed and failing software development and funding modes that tried to shoehorn artist driven intuitive graphics applications into a development model that tangentially works for lone wolf kernel device driver hackers we have started to overcome the damage and move in a positive direction with Krita, Natron, Blender Foundation etc.

The Gimp project and development model has not produced a productive environment or a compelling product for any of the groups I mentioned. That has been the case for many years. After a lot of hard work other projects have managed to formulate better more productive models to develop OSS graphics programs and find funding to do so. The artists are happier because they get better more competitive software and they are willing to fund its development. The programmers are happier because they have a clear direction and understanding of who there users are and where the software needs to go. And the researchers are happier because they see a community who is interested in and welcoming of new and useful graphics algorithms and research.

None of this has happened because of the Gimp. It has happened in spite of the Gimp project sucking most of the air out of the room for many years and contributing nothing to the OSS graphics community as a whole.

If you care about fostering the growth of OSS Graphics software and a community of talented Artists that feel comfortable and productive using OSS software then you need to promote the people and the projects that are making that happen.

The gimp project needs to take a break and perhaps hand the reigns over to a new group with a different vision. The current project and its structure, soliciting money form the Artist community into developers private patreon accounts with vague promises to make Gimp great again is not helping Gimp or the OSS graphics community.


> The gimp project needs to take a break and perhaps hand the reigns over to a new group with a different vision

Last time I checked, the GIMP was open source. If this group of fresh-bloods has a better vision, let them fork or start from scratch - there is simply no good reason to kill the current project. "Sucking up all the air" is just another way to say "it's difficult to compete with" - and blaming the GIMP project for that says more about the potential up-and-coming than GIMP. XFree86 didn't "suck most of the air out" of XServer market- x.org was just better, ditto OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice.


> It has happened in spite of the Gimp project sucking most of the air out of the room for many years and contributing nothing to the OSS graphics community as a whole.

Oh I dunno. I see people doing excellent work with GIMP all the time. How about you?

> The gimp project needs to take a break and perhaps hand the reigns over to a new group with a different vision.

There is no "new group". There's just us.


> There is no "new group". There's just us.

Yes, and now would be a good time to admit that the reason why that is the case is because the Gimp project and development model are unproductive and failing when compared to other projects who do not have any problem attracting new people or resources.

The Gimp project needs to dismantle itself and take some time to think about how it can build a more productive and sustainable model that attracts developers based on the successful examples that other projects have.

Begging for coins into your Patreon is not part of building a large, productive and sustainable project. Its more of the same misguided and shortsighted mismanagement that has brought Gimp to its current sorry state.


> The Gimp project needs to dismantle itself

Yes, I expect you would want that.

> the same misguided and shortsighted mismanagement

It's amazing we managed so far at all without your expert input.

There are many reasons things are the way they are. That you don't know much about those is a whole different story.




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