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This is my understanding, as well. I don't know why it happened that way, but contributor mindshare really moved away from Gimp years and years ago. Other simil

This is my understanding, as well. I don't know why it happened that way, but contributor mindshare really moved away from Gimp years and years ago. Other similar projects have been released and surpassed Gimp in feature compatibility in the time since Gimp has been released. Sad, really, given the important role Gimp played back in the late 90's. Gimp was initially the G in GTK, and was closely related to the foundations of Gnome. (And Gnumeric.... which, to my understanding, has the same sorts of issues as Gimp.)

jay_kyburz 8y ago
I have read that there are few contributors because the current maintainers are a little hostile towards people who want to try and improve GIMP.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I had heard the same thing, but the article linked here seems to indicate a very healthy attitude towards cooperation. I wonder how much of our impression is appropriate at this point. Possibly the project is suffering from bad press than no longer applies? Here's to hoping, anyway!
  - antt 8y ago
    The whole gtk ecosystem smells off. I don't know why but projects that pick qt are by and large friendlier, better maintained and more successful. Back in the day I tried to port xournal to gtk3 and it was a nightmare because there was so much breakage between gtk2 and 3. So much so I gave up. By comparison porting my own stupid python scripts between major versions of qt was painless.
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      Are you the author of xournal?
      - antt 8y ago
        No just a motivated former user.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  I get the impression that a lot of offers for contributing to the GIMP would be offers to bring the UI in line with Photoshop. I hope they're not instead scaring off potentially good contributors, because it's a lovely piece of software and there are a lot of buses out there for there to be only three developers.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  Mmm... Hostile how? Improve how? :) If you want to write a public API to access text layers and then patch the PSD plug-in for text layers support, you are welcome. If you want to make the tool's options dock optionally horizontal and docked to the top (a-la Photoshop, Inkscape etc.), you are welcome. If you want to improve OpenEXR support, you are welcome. If you want to improve the text tool (easy text on path etc.), you are welcome. There are hundreds of things GIMP could do better. We know that. We welcome contributions. The only thing we don't feel good about is when people tell us to make GIMP look and work like Photoshop "because Photoshop". GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop. We need better reasons than that. Apart from this, you are welcome to come and propose changes. Edit: to be fair, two other topics we don't exactly like are project name change and save/export :)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jay_kyburz 8y ago
    Yes, but the number one thing wrong with GIMP is that it is hard to use, "because Photoshop" is what everybody knows. Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a few things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation. I switched to Affinity a few years ago, and it was tough to "unlearn" photoshop, but it was worth it. (But it could have more painful if Affinity was as weird as GIMP)
    - prokoudine 8y ago
      > Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a few things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation. Such as...?
      - mschaef 8y ago
        I was about to say 'draw a shape with a toolbar button'... but after looking at historical Photoshop toolboxes, it doesn't appear to have had that feature either. :-) (Pixelmator, however, does...) I almost hate to write what I'm about to write, but... When I needed to add some text and labeling to an image, it was easiest just to drop the $30 on a Pixelmator license. For dealing with RAW photos from a handful of cameras, it was $120 on a license for Adobe Lightroom. Both have generally served their purposes well. Some of those features I could've implemented myself, but some I couldn't, and none of that work fits into a schedule full of other obligations. (Technical and otherwise.) I think the difficulty with open source end user app development is that it can ask a burden of its community that few people have the skills to bear up to and even fewer have the time or inclination to do so. From my point of view, this leaves me with a combination of gratitude for the people like yourself that actually do step up, but also a degree of frustration that there's no easy way to make the situation better. At the end of the day, I think the strength of OSS application software is that, by virtue of being OSS, it's possible for it to be things that closed software cannot.

jay_kyburz 8y ago

I have read that there are few contributors because the current maintainers are a little hostile towards people who want to try and improve GIMP.

mikekchar 8y ago
I had heard the same thing, but the article linked here seems to indicate a very healthy attitude towards cooperation. I wonder how much of our impression is appropriate at this point. Possibly the project is suffering from bad press than no longer applies? Here's to hoping, anyway!
- antt 8y ago
  The whole gtk ecosystem smells off. I don't know why but projects that pick qt are by and large friendlier, better maintained and more successful. Back in the day I tried to port xournal to gtk3 and it was a nightmare because there was so much breakage between gtk2 and 3. So much so I gave up. By comparison porting my own stupid python scripts between major versions of qt was painless.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Are you the author of xournal?
    - antt 8y ago
      No just a motivated former user.
pessimizer 8y ago
I get the impression that a lot of offers for contributing to the GIMP would be offers to bring the UI in line with Photoshop. I hope they're not instead scaring off potentially good contributors, because it's a lovely piece of software and there are a lot of buses out there for there to be only three developers.
prokoudine 8y ago
Mmm... Hostile how? Improve how? :) If you want to write a public API to access text layers and then patch the PSD plug-in for text layers support, you are welcome. If you want to make the tool's options dock optionally horizontal and docked to the top (a-la Photoshop, Inkscape etc.), you are welcome. If you want to improve OpenEXR support, you are welcome. If you want to improve the text tool (easy text on path etc.), you are welcome. There are hundreds of things GIMP could do better. We know that. We welcome contributions. The only thing we don't feel good about is when people tell us to make GIMP look and work like Photoshop "because Photoshop". GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop. We need better reasons than that. Apart from this, you are welcome to come and propose changes. Edit: to be fair, two other topics we don't exactly like are project name change and save/export :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jay_kyburz 8y ago
  Yes, but the number one thing wrong with GIMP is that it is hard to use, "because Photoshop" is what everybody knows. Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a few things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation. I switched to Affinity a few years ago, and it was tough to "unlearn" photoshop, but it was worth it. (But it could have more painful if Affinity was as weird as GIMP)
  - prokoudine 8y ago
    > Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a few things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation. Such as...?
    - mschaef 8y ago
      I was about to say 'draw a shape with a toolbar button'... but after looking at historical Photoshop toolboxes, it doesn't appear to have had that feature either. :-) (Pixelmator, however, does...) I almost hate to write what I'm about to write, but... When I needed to add some text and labeling to an image, it was easiest just to drop the $30 on a Pixelmator license. For dealing with RAW photos from a handful of cameras, it was $120 on a license for Adobe Lightroom. Both have generally served their purposes well. Some of those features I could've implemented myself, but some I couldn't, and none of that work fits into a schedule full of other obligations. (Technical and otherwise.) I think the difficulty with open source end user app development is that it can ask a burden of its community that few people have the skills to bear up to and even fewer have the time or inclination to do so. From my point of view, this leaves me with a combination of gratitude for the people like yourself that actually do step up, but also a degree of frustration that there's no easy way to make the situation better. At the end of the day, I think the strength of OSS application software is that, by virtue of being OSS, it's possible for it to be things that closed software cannot.