11 ms·

GIMP developer looking for funding

261 points by desiderantes 10y ago

timonovici 10y ago
Finally! With one developer full-time, this project will pick up the pace.
- 9erdelta 10y ago
  Pardon me for not being able to tell, but is this sarcasm or sincerity?
  - std_throwaway 10y ago
    I was reading a bit through the mailing list and it seemed that the GIMP development team had bit off a bit more than they could swallow at that time. This is what I've got from it: * They rewrite the core of the software to allow a lot of new features. * The developers could not agree on all critical details on how to proceed. * Some developers got frustrated because things were not going their way or proceeding too slowly. * The new model of how things work makes much of the old code obsolete. * There are a lot of modules which need to be rewritten to use the new core. * Before thinking about releasing the new GIMP >50% of the total work has to be done making transition hard. * Due to its 'unique' interface a lot of people don't like the GIMP even if it would do everything they need. * Designing and implementing a new interface is another pain point. Considering that currently the GIMP is at a critical point in its development, a full-time developer could really be the pivotal element in making it succeed. I don't know much about this particular developer, though.
    - prokoudine 10y ago
      Your summary is more or less correct :)
  - timonovici 10y ago
    Sincerity of course. There's so much work to do on GIMP, especially with GEGL integration and non-destructive editing, and too few hands to work on it. It would actually deserve 5-10 full-time developers given the project size, but 1 for the moment is good enough. If you ever tried slipping a few line of code for a side-project or a free/open source one, you know how hard it is to focus when you have such limited time and energy.
- timonovici 10y ago
  I just picked the $8 tier :) I advice you do the same :)
std_throwaway 10y ago
Thinking back of all the times I've used the GIMP; I'm compelled to give it a little boost. EDIT: I'm willing to give the GIMP a boost. I don't know this developer. Is someone knowledgable about this particular developer. Is it likely they are the right person to do it? EDIT2: He's contributed a lot already for a long time and still keeps on going strong. It looks good to me.
- timonovici 10y ago
  I have heard about Pippin before, and he and Mitch (another well known GIMP developer) confirmed on IRC that the campaign is legit. The campaign is also listed here http://pippin.gimp.org/ http://pippin.gimp.org/ - in the header.
  - std_throwaway 10y ago
    Commit logs of GEGL show he's been an active developer for a long time: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gegl/log/?ofs=1050 https://git.gnome.org/browse/gegl/log/?ofs=1050
    - timonovici 10y ago
      Cool. I just went with the $8 tier. Go go GIMP!
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Thinking back of all the times I rage quit GIMP; I'm compelled to read his proposal.
- unhammer 10y ago
  Some references/credentials: * One of the main developers of GEGL (new backend-library of GIMP) https://git.gnome.org//browse/gegl/log/ https://git.gnome.org//browse/gegl/log/ * Won the Norwegian Unix Users Group's "prize for furthering Free Software" https://www.nuug.no/prisen/index-2009.shtml https://www.nuug.no/prisen/index-2009.shtml for his work on GIMP * Has held presentations at LibreGraphicsMeeting with core GIMP developer Michael Natterer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDbSQk9Ba0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDbSQk9Ba0 * Is mentioned in release notes of GIMP 2.9.2 https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/gimp-2-9-2-released/ https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/gimp-2-9-2-released/ So as long as the "pippin" user of https://www.patreon.com/pippin https://www.patreon.com/pippin is the same as GIMP's pippin, it seems legit.
gressquel 10y ago
gimp is ace, but I prefer Paint.NET
- mtbomb 10y ago
  Yes, I'd like to see a paint.net for Linux or mac
  - mappu 10y ago
    Pinta is a clone of Paint.NET for Linux and Mac. It's mostly quite good and has very high feature parity. Although it can't resize a selected image portion and so i still use paint.net.
  - AckSyn 10y ago
    You can still get the source code for paint.net before the license change happened here: https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN
- supergreg 10y ago
  If only it worked in Linux. As an aside, I've tried Krita, but am too used to how things work in Gimp, particularly the shortcuts. How different is Paint.net?
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  Paint.NET is nice, but I prefer to use free software and to not use a closed source operating system from Microsoft.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Paint.NET is great for Windows users that want more than MS Paint and for whom Photoshop is too expensive and Gimp is too complicated. But alas, this thread is not about Gimp alternatives.
- snvzz 10y ago
  paint.net is not free software. Apples to oranges.
devwastaken 10y ago
The post there doesn't seem too convincing. I understand how important Gimp is, in a world where Adobe owns the scene of image editing, but others may not know that well. I feel the post really should be conveying what they will be providing if they reach their patreon marker. A better competitor to Photoshop, Paint.net. What features will be worked on, etc. Its gotta market itself in some way.
- quadrangle 10y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... GIMP is free software and ethical. Paint.net is the same rental model that Photoshop is now using and is completely against the public interest for us to put our resources into that sort of business.
  - daxelrod 10y ago
    > Paint.net is the same rental model that Photoshop is now using We're talking about http://www.getpaint.net http://www.getpaint.net, right? This is proprietary desktop software, but as far as I can tell, it is gratis. (They do solicit donations, but paying has no bearing on the license.)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - quadrangle 10y ago
      Sorry, I'd seen web service in this direction and assumed that's what this is, since "paint.net" isn't a desktop software name really.
      - MikusR 10y ago
        It really is.
  - bratsche 10y ago
generic_user 10y ago
For anyone who is interested in funding Professional quality OSS graphics software that meets the requirements of current standards and expectations I strongly suggest to donated to the Krita, Natron or Blender project instead of Gimp. The Gimp project has been quite abrasive to the graphics research and software development communities for many years. The Gimp team 'knows better' then the highly qualified and experienced graphics programmers who offered to help the project bring there code base into the current standards for graphics. There has been a lot of goodwill that has been squandered by the Gimp developers to the point that I seriously doubt that anyone with the skills or the time to work on OSS graphics is willing to invest any time in the project. Any further development of Gimp will more then likely be an upgrade to the latest version of the GTK+ toolkit slapped on top of the same outdated 8bit early 1990's architecture fallowed by praise by people who have little experience or interest in graphics at any serious level.
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  Can you comment on the substantial redesign of the GIMP that will be in the next major version?
  - generic_user 10y ago
    I would not give a critique unless I did a thorough review of the current incarnation of re-architecture with some benchmarks on stressful average work flow that could be expected from a computer graphics artist or painter. I will say that the Gimp 'core rewrite' has been a project in development since the early 2000's. I have never seen a clear design document explaining what this new core is suppose to achieve and for what uses Gimp expects to be used by professional level Artists workflows. The last development that I was paying attention to was the decision to switch to GEGL for there core compositing and pixel engine. But it looked like it would simply be easier and probably better to start from scratch and build an entirely new software build around a 32bit image architecture rather then try and retrofit there 8bit custom build compositing system. I will also note that they decided to invest there limited resources into upgrading the gui from GTK2 to GTK3 rather then focus that energy on the core. That shows rather skewed priority focus for a software that has some serious issues.
magicfractal 10y ago
Pippin is a extremely competent programmer and has been commited to GIMP and GEGL for a long time. I just signed up for a monthly contribution and I believe it's a great way to support the development of free software for graphics.
- foolrush 10y ago
  I hope this is some sarcastic joke. I really do. If anyone believes this, they have apparently been asleep at the wheel of GIMP development for the past decade. Hubris. Ego. Not a shred of a clue about image editing. The entire batch of current systemic problems are a byproduct of this developer's efforts and architecture.
  - snvzz 10y ago
    Care to elaborate?
  - k_lander 10y ago
    How so?
  - 9erdelta 10y ago
    Hopping on the elaboration bandwagon as well. Anyone considering financial support of the dev would probably appreciate more information about your claims.
mlinksva 10y ago
Another GIMP developer has been looking for funding at Patreon/Tipee for their dev work mixed with work on an animated film, sidebar of https://girinstud.io/news/2016/09/dont-be-a-stranger-to-gimp-be-gimp/ https://girinstud.io/news/2016/09/dont-be-a-stranger-to-gimp... for links to those campaigns, comments below for discussion of such funding attempts.
foolrush 10y ago
The architecture and architect shouldn't be writing software. Complete hack with no knowledge of image editing. Chase down Elle Stone's posts on how fundamentally broken it is. Shortlist: 1. Hideously over-engineered pixel path makes performance, if at all possible, worse. 2. Broken concept of colour management and pixels. See sRGB debacle and the concept of hard coded spaces. 3. Anachronism of imaging model. 4. Ignored fundamental problems that many people pointed out years ago. See the ridiculous "unbounded mode" that even a 100 level image computer student could have demonstrated would never work. 5. As per 4., ignored all evidence and designed a worthless software model around. Etc. The project needs to die.
- timClicks 10y ago
  This is why we can't have nice things. Open source development that improves the lives of millions of people is still flamed because of choices made far in the past that are very hard to fix means that it "needs to die". Look - irrespective of the truth of the message, remember that there are humans reading it and framing matters
- prokoudine 10y ago
  > Chase down Elle Stone's posts on how fundamentally broken it is. Oh, let's! http://ninedegreesbelow.com/files/linear-is-the-new-black.html http://ninedegreesbelow.com/files/linear-is-the-new-black.ht... "LNB and CCE both allow the user to easily produce radiometrically correct editing results. LNB provides fewer user choices for blend modes and for various operations, but the defaults for the operations and blend modes that I've looked at are logical and useable." LNB is the linear-is-the-new-black branch of upstream GIMP. CCE is her patched version.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
desiderantes 10y ago
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.
- generic_user 10y ago
  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.
  - 10y ago
shmerl 10y ago
I hope Gimp will switch to GTK3 at last. It's one of those projects that's still stuck with GTK2. Or even better - Qt ;)
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I'm so glad that Qt is gaining wider adoption in a post-GNOME world. It seems that everyone went Gtk because Gnome was the default DE for most major distros. With that constraint virtually gone, Qt has seen much wider adoption, which is awesome, as it is, in my opinion, clearly the superior platform.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    > It seems that everyone went Gtk because Gnome was the default DE for most major distros. No, the problem was with Qt itself. The whole reason GTK was created, is because Qt wasn't really FOSS. Only much later Qt was really opened up. So yeah, today Qt is open and it's clearly much better. But the damage was already done, and the split happened.
    - danieldk 10y ago
      Qt has been open source since 1999 and GPL-licensed since 2000, nearly 17 years. GNOME was started in 1997 and GNOME 1.0 was released in 1999. So, much later is not really an adequate description. I think the grandparent is definitely right. A lot of projects were started post-1999, when Qt was already open. But GNOME was the default desktop of many distributions (including Red Hat and later Ubuntu). Moreover, it is harder to bind Qt in order languages, since it is C++. There was a strong dislike for C++ in parts of the FLOSS community.
      - shmerl 10y ago
        Not much, but 2 years were still enough to cause a major split and kick off Gnome / GTK and push the later from an obscure library used by Gimp to a widely used GUI toolkit.
- 10y ago
bedros 10y ago
Linux needs a great video editor, I would contribute if they add video editing to gimp
- herbst 10y ago
  Lightworks? It even works slightly better on Linux than everywhere else it seems. Its the editor in which Pulp fiction for example was made, and IMO its (in opposite to the others i've tried) easy to learn but also able to do advanced stuff.
saosebastiao 10y ago
Off topic but I found it interesting: the original creator of GIMP is also one of the founders of cockroach labs / cockroachDB. That's a pretty cool resume IMO.
- WillyOnWheels 10y ago
  The two original creators of The Gimp founded Cockroach Labs, were long time Google employees, and sold their startup Viewfinder to Square.
wutf 10y ago
The only way I would fund GIMP is if that funding went directly towards a better UI. It's not worth improving the algorithms given how hard it is to use.
- dqv 10y ago
  >given how hard it is to use. What do you find about Gimp that is hard to use?
- nercht12 10y ago
  I happen to like the UI. It's not for everyone, admittedly, esp. people coming from PS, but it can modified and rearranged. ATM, my Gimp UI is a single window will all the tools nicely arranged on the left side and only containing the most-used tabs. There are only 6 or 7 tabs you'll use 99% of the time anyways.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Same. I am no graphic wizard, i dont want to relearn. I am happy it still looks more or less than i when i learned it years ago, and pretty much similar to the last PS version i've used.
- neurostimulant 10y ago
  What's so bad about the UI? People often complain about the confusing multi-window mode, bug gimp actually have a single window mode for a while now, which make the layout looks somewhat like photoshop's.
  - hobarrera 10y ago
    I recently saw PS on a friend's computer, and it seemed to be multi-windowed just like GIMP, so that might also be out-of-date. Also, can't you just position floating windows in the right place so that they look pretty much docked in-place? Note that I don't have any OS X machines to confirm this myself, this was at a designer's mac a few weeks ago.

261 points by desiderantes 10y ago

timonovici 10y ago

Finally! With one developer full-time, this project will pick up the pace.

9erdelta 10y ago
Pardon me for not being able to tell, but is this sarcasm or sincerity?
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  I was reading a bit through the mailing list and it seemed that the GIMP development team had bit off a bit more than they could swallow at that time. This is what I've got from it: * They rewrite the core of the software to allow a lot of new features. * The developers could not agree on all critical details on how to proceed. * Some developers got frustrated because things were not going their way or proceeding too slowly. * The new model of how things work makes much of the old code obsolete. * There are a lot of modules which need to be rewritten to use the new core. * Before thinking about releasing the new GIMP >50% of the total work has to be done making transition hard. * Due to its 'unique' interface a lot of people don't like the GIMP even if it would do everything they need. * Designing and implementing a new interface is another pain point. Considering that currently the GIMP is at a critical point in its development, a full-time developer could really be the pivotal element in making it succeed. I don't know much about this particular developer, though.
  - prokoudine 10y ago
    Your summary is more or less correct :)
- timonovici 10y ago
  Sincerity of course. There's so much work to do on GIMP, especially with GEGL integration and non-destructive editing, and too few hands to work on it. It would actually deserve 5-10 full-time developers given the project size, but 1 for the moment is good enough. If you ever tried slipping a few line of code for a side-project or a free/open source one, you know how hard it is to focus when you have such limited time and energy.
timonovici 10y ago
I just picked the $8 tier :) I advice you do the same :)

std_throwaway 10y ago

Thinking back of all the times I've used the GIMP; I'm compelled to give it a little boost. EDIT: I'm willing to give the GIMP a boost. I don't know this developer. Is someone knowledgable about this particular developer. Is it likely they are the right person to do it? EDIT2: He's contributed a lot already for a long time and still keeps on going strong. It looks good to me.

timonovici 10y ago
I have heard about Pippin before, and he and Mitch (another well known GIMP developer) confirmed on IRC that the campaign is legit. The campaign is also listed here http://pippin.gimp.org/ http://pippin.gimp.org/ - in the header.
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  Commit logs of GEGL show he's been an active developer for a long time: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gegl/log/?ofs=1050 https://git.gnome.org/browse/gegl/log/?ofs=1050
  - timonovici 10y ago
    Cool. I just went with the $8 tier. Go go GIMP!
agumonkey 10y ago
Thinking back of all the times I rage quit GIMP; I'm compelled to read his proposal.
unhammer 10y ago
Some references/credentials: * One of the main developers of GEGL (new backend-library of GIMP) https://git.gnome.org//browse/gegl/log/ https://git.gnome.org//browse/gegl/log/ * Won the Norwegian Unix Users Group's "prize for furthering Free Software" https://www.nuug.no/prisen/index-2009.shtml https://www.nuug.no/prisen/index-2009.shtml for his work on GIMP * Has held presentations at LibreGraphicsMeeting with core GIMP developer Michael Natterer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDbSQk9Ba0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDbSQk9Ba0 * Is mentioned in release notes of GIMP 2.9.2 https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/gimp-2-9-2-released/ https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/gimp-2-9-2-released/ So as long as the "pippin" user of https://www.patreon.com/pippin https://www.patreon.com/pippin is the same as GIMP's pippin, it seems legit.

gressquel 10y ago

gimp is ace, but I prefer Paint.NET

mtbomb 10y ago
Yes, I'd like to see a paint.net for Linux or mac
- mappu 10y ago
  Pinta is a clone of Paint.NET for Linux and Mac. It's mostly quite good and has very high feature parity. Although it can't resize a selected image portion and so i still use paint.net.
- AckSyn 10y ago
  You can still get the source code for paint.net before the license change happened here: https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN
supergreg 10y ago
If only it worked in Linux. As an aside, I've tried Krita, but am too used to how things work in Gimp, particularly the shortcuts. How different is Paint.net?
std_throwaway 10y ago
Paint.NET is nice, but I prefer to use free software and to not use a closed source operating system from Microsoft.
lucb1e 10y ago
Paint.NET is great for Windows users that want more than MS Paint and for whom Photoshop is too expensive and Gimp is too complicated. But alas, this thread is not about Gimp alternatives.
snvzz 10y ago
paint.net is not free software. Apples to oranges.

devwastaken 10y ago

The post there doesn't seem too convincing. I understand how important Gimp is, in a world where Adobe owns the scene of image editing, but others may not know that well. I feel the post really should be conveying what they will be providing if they reach their patreon marker. A better competitor to Photoshop, Paint.net. What features will be worked on, etc. Its gotta market itself in some way.

quadrangle 10y ago
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... GIMP is free software and ethical. Paint.net is the same rental model that Photoshop is now using and is completely against the public interest for us to put our resources into that sort of business.
- daxelrod 10y ago
  > Paint.net is the same rental model that Photoshop is now using We're talking about http://www.getpaint.net http://www.getpaint.net, right? This is proprietary desktop software, but as far as I can tell, it is gratis. (They do solicit donations, but paying has no bearing on the license.)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - quadrangle 10y ago
    Sorry, I'd seen web service in this direction and assumed that's what this is, since "paint.net" isn't a desktop software name really.
    - MikusR 10y ago
      It really is.
- bratsche 10y ago

generic_user 10y ago

For anyone who is interested in funding Professional quality OSS graphics software that meets the requirements of current standards and expectations I strongly suggest to donated to the Krita, Natron or Blender project instead of Gimp. The Gimp project has been quite abrasive to the graphics research and software development communities for many years. The Gimp team 'knows better' then the highly qualified and experienced graphics programmers who offered to help the project bring there code base into the current standards for graphics. There has been a lot of goodwill that has been squandered by the Gimp developers to the point that I seriously doubt that anyone with the skills or the time to work on OSS graphics is willing to invest any time in the project. Any further development of Gimp will more then likely be an upgrade to the latest version of the GTK+ toolkit slapped on top of the same outdated 8bit early 1990's architecture fallowed by praise by people who have little experience or interest in graphics at any serious level.

std_throwaway 10y ago
Can you comment on the substantial redesign of the GIMP that will be in the next major version?
- generic_user 10y ago
  I would not give a critique unless I did a thorough review of the current incarnation of re-architecture with some benchmarks on stressful average work flow that could be expected from a computer graphics artist or painter. I will say that the Gimp 'core rewrite' has been a project in development since the early 2000's. I have never seen a clear design document explaining what this new core is suppose to achieve and for what uses Gimp expects to be used by professional level Artists workflows. The last development that I was paying attention to was the decision to switch to GEGL for there core compositing and pixel engine. But it looked like it would simply be easier and probably better to start from scratch and build an entirely new software build around a 32bit image architecture rather then try and retrofit there 8bit custom build compositing system. I will also note that they decided to invest there limited resources into upgrading the gui from GTK2 to GTK3 rather then focus that energy on the core. That shows rather skewed priority focus for a software that has some serious issues.

magicfractal 10y ago

Pippin is a extremely competent programmer and has been commited to GIMP and GEGL for a long time. I just signed up for a monthly contribution and I believe it's a great way to support the development of free software for graphics.

foolrush 10y ago
I hope this is some sarcastic joke. I really do. If anyone believes this, they have apparently been asleep at the wheel of GIMP development for the past decade. Hubris. Ego. Not a shred of a clue about image editing. The entire batch of current systemic problems are a byproduct of this developer's efforts and architecture.
- snvzz 10y ago
  Care to elaborate?
- k_lander 10y ago
  How so?
- 9erdelta 10y ago
  Hopping on the elaboration bandwagon as well. Anyone considering financial support of the dev would probably appreciate more information about your claims.

mlinksva 10y ago

Another GIMP developer has been looking for funding at Patreon/Tipee for their dev work mixed with work on an animated film, sidebar of https://girinstud.io/news/2016/09/dont-be-a-stranger-to-gimp-be-gimp/ https://girinstud.io/news/2016/09/dont-be-a-stranger-to-gimp... for links to those campaigns, comments below for discussion of such funding attempts.

foolrush 10y ago

The architecture and architect shouldn't be writing software. Complete hack with no knowledge of image editing. Chase down Elle Stone's posts on how fundamentally broken it is. Shortlist: 1. Hideously over-engineered pixel path makes performance, if at all possible, worse. 2. Broken concept of colour management and pixels. See sRGB debacle and the concept of hard coded spaces. 3. Anachronism of imaging model. 4. Ignored fundamental problems that many people pointed out years ago. See the ridiculous "unbounded mode" that even a 100 level image computer student could have demonstrated would never work. 5. As per 4., ignored all evidence and designed a worthless software model around. Etc. The project needs to die.

timClicks 10y ago
This is why we can't have nice things. Open source development that improves the lives of millions of people is still flamed because of choices made far in the past that are very hard to fix means that it "needs to die". Look - irrespective of the truth of the message, remember that there are humans reading it and framing matters
prokoudine 10y ago
> Chase down Elle Stone's posts on how fundamentally broken it is. Oh, let's! http://ninedegreesbelow.com/files/linear-is-the-new-black.html http://ninedegreesbelow.com/files/linear-is-the-new-black.ht... "LNB and CCE both allow the user to easily produce radiometrically correct editing results. LNB provides fewer user choices for blend modes and for various operations, but the defaults for the operations and blend modes that I've looked at are logical and useable." LNB is the linear-is-the-new-black branch of upstream GIMP. CCE is her patched version.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

desiderantes 10y ago

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.

generic_user 10y ago
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.
- 10y ago

shmerl 10y ago

I hope Gimp will switch to GTK3 at last. It's one of those projects that's still stuck with GTK2. Or even better - Qt ;)

cookiecaper 10y ago
I'm so glad that Qt is gaining wider adoption in a post-GNOME world. It seems that everyone went Gtk because Gnome was the default DE for most major distros. With that constraint virtually gone, Qt has seen much wider adoption, which is awesome, as it is, in my opinion, clearly the superior platform.
- shmerl 10y ago
  > It seems that everyone went Gtk because Gnome was the default DE for most major distros. No, the problem was with Qt itself. The whole reason GTK was created, is because Qt wasn't really FOSS. Only much later Qt was really opened up. So yeah, today Qt is open and it's clearly much better. But the damage was already done, and the split happened.
  - danieldk 10y ago
    Qt has been open source since 1999 and GPL-licensed since 2000, nearly 17 years. GNOME was started in 1997 and GNOME 1.0 was released in 1999. So, much later is not really an adequate description. I think the grandparent is definitely right. A lot of projects were started post-1999, when Qt was already open. But GNOME was the default desktop of many distributions (including Red Hat and later Ubuntu). Moreover, it is harder to bind Qt in order languages, since it is C++. There was a strong dislike for C++ in parts of the FLOSS community.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Not much, but 2 years were still enough to cause a major split and kick off Gnome / GTK and push the later from an obscure library used by Gimp to a widely used GUI toolkit.
10y ago

bedros 10y ago

Linux needs a great video editor, I would contribute if they add video editing to gimp

herbst 10y ago
Lightworks? It even works slightly better on Linux than everywhere else it seems. Its the editor in which Pulp fiction for example was made, and IMO its (in opposite to the others i've tried) easy to learn but also able to do advanced stuff.

saosebastiao 10y ago

Off topic but I found it interesting: the original creator of GIMP is also one of the founders of cockroach labs / cockroachDB. That's a pretty cool resume IMO.

WillyOnWheels 10y ago
The two original creators of The Gimp founded Cockroach Labs, were long time Google employees, and sold their startup Viewfinder to Square.

wutf 10y ago

The only way I would fund GIMP is if that funding went directly towards a better UI. It's not worth improving the algorithms given how hard it is to use.

dqv 10y ago
>given how hard it is to use. What do you find about Gimp that is hard to use?
nercht12 10y ago
I happen to like the UI. It's not for everyone, admittedly, esp. people coming from PS, but it can modified and rearranged. ATM, my Gimp UI is a single window will all the tools nicely arranged on the left side and only containing the most-used tabs. There are only 6 or 7 tabs you'll use 99% of the time anyways.
- herbst 10y ago
  Same. I am no graphic wizard, i dont want to relearn. I am happy it still looks more or less than i when i learned it years ago, and pretty much similar to the last PS version i've used.
neurostimulant 10y ago
What's so bad about the UI? People often complain about the confusing multi-window mode, bug gimp actually have a single window mode for a while now, which make the layout looks somewhat like photoshop's.
- hobarrera 10y ago
  I recently saw PS on a friend's computer, and it seemed to be multi-windowed just like GIMP, so that might also be out-of-date. Also, can't you just position floating windows in the right place so that they look pretty much docked in-place? Note that I don't have any OS X machines to confirm this myself, this was at a designer's mac a few weeks ago.