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There has been plenty of forks of GIMP, but none really picked up steam. It has been forked over the name, over the UI not being close enough to Photoshop and o

There has been plenty of forks of GIMP, but none really picked up steam. It has been forked over the name, over the UI not being close enough to Photoshop and over core features like high-bitdepth support. In a FOSS project fork, one needs to out-code the original project in terms of features delivered to users, out-market it to build brand recognition, and create enough network effects that potential contributors choose the fork instead of the original. And with the stamina to do this for a few years while shake out. Since there seldom is a lot of money to go around for funding this effort, it is very challenging. OpenOffice -> LibreOffice was a relatively recent successful example, but it took many people a lot of work over many years. Node.js -> IO.JS -> Node.js was interesting in that they merged back together, with the combined momentum of the fork and original.

inferiorhuman 8y ago
> There has been plenty of forks of GIMP, but none really picked up steam. It has been forked over the name, over the UI not being close enough to Photoshop and over core features like high-bitdepth support. If memory serves the KDE guys did a port of GIMP to Qt but eventually dropped it due to all the teeth gnashing on the Gtk side.
- boudewijnrempt 8y ago
  It was just a tech demo for a conference, but yeah, the reception was not friendly, to say the least, along the lines of "How did you dare to hack on Gimp, doing this, without doing us the courtesy of asking for permission first!" I wasn't there, back then, but gosh, people were young! See https://marc.info/?l=gimp-developer&m=90221516927992&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=gimp-developer&m=90221516927992&w=2
  - emilsedgh 8y ago
    That is one hell of a thread! I've been involved in KDE Community in the past 10-15 years and I'd never seen so much bad blood between developers of both communities publicly. It shows that the flame wars that still continue to this day had a root.

inferiorhuman 8y ago

> There has been plenty of forks of GIMP, but none really picked up steam. It has been forked over the name, over the UI not being close enough to Photoshop and over core features like high-bitdepth support. If memory serves the KDE guys did a port of GIMP to Qt but eventually dropped it due to all the teeth gnashing on the Gtk side.

boudewijnrempt 8y ago
It was just a tech demo for a conference, but yeah, the reception was not friendly, to say the least, along the lines of "How did you dare to hack on Gimp, doing this, without doing us the courtesy of asking for permission first!" I wasn't there, back then, but gosh, people were young! See https://marc.info/?l=gimp-developer&m=90221516927992&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=gimp-developer&m=90221516927992&w=2
- emilsedgh 8y ago
  That is one hell of a thread! I've been involved in KDE Community in the past 10-15 years and I'd never seen so much bad blood between developers of both communities publicly. It shows that the flame wars that still continue to this day had a root.