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This is a extremely reasonable attitude to have, as a FOSS maintainer. For someone who doesn't write C at a "GIMP maintainer" standard (maybe I'm not even a pr

This is a extremely reasonable attitude to have, as a FOSS maintainer. For someone who doesn't write C at a "GIMP maintainer" standard (maybe I'm not even a programmer and just want to make pictures) it will be far more cost effective to chuck a few hundred dollars at Adobe than spend person-years learning and working enough to get that kind of feature in, or funding the development. And then while doing that learn C++ to a standard to get your topological naming rework into FreeCAD via OpenCASCADE. And so on. Amortised over the everyone, it's a tiny cost relative to what Adobe costs each person, but that's the open source curse: you can't easily scrape up 10,000 $10 donations to fund development work worth millions in the end (to other people). I don't really have a solution other then grind onwards.

memefrog 3y ago
A large number of C programmers can write code at that level. But over the many, many years that this supposed problem has existed, not one has stepped up to do it. Many other problems have been solved with open source software, many of them much harder than this. So maybe the fact it hasn't been done indicates it's not really that important.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  The problem is the intersection between C programmers competent and tenacious enough to drive it though, and those who really care about CMYK image editing. Maybe both large populations, but the overlap? And also the population of people who make that their number one priority and not, say, working on LibreOffice.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    The overlap is large enough for GIMP and Krita and Inkscape and dozens of other free software tools to exist. There's overlap between competent C programmers and accountants (GNUCash, ledger, hledger), and between competent C programmers and lawyers, and between competent C programmers and typesetters, and between competent C programmers and desktop publishers, and between competent C programmers and the target audience for every other open source tool. It seems easier to assume that it just isn't a big deal. I don't really understand the issue myself, but it seems like the simplest explanation. It would be strange for this to be the one random area where 'competent C or C++ programmer' and 'domain expert' doesn't have an overlap. I mean maybe there's a pattern here with some other areas that lack good free software? I don't know. People complain about other 'creative' software lacking good free software tools but I think that's usually due to a lack of familiarity rather than a lack of quality in the software itself. Creatives seem to be more bothered by UI they're not used to than others are.

memefrog 3y ago

A large number of C programmers can write code at that level. But over the many, many years that this supposed problem has existed, not one has stepped up to do it. Many other problems have been solved with open source software, many of them much harder than this. So maybe the fact it hasn't been done indicates it's not really that important.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago
The problem is the intersection between C programmers competent and tenacious enough to drive it though, and those who really care about CMYK image editing. Maybe both large populations, but the overlap? And also the population of people who make that their number one priority and not, say, working on LibreOffice.
- memefrog 3y ago
  The overlap is large enough for GIMP and Krita and Inkscape and dozens of other free software tools to exist. There's overlap between competent C programmers and accountants (GNUCash, ledger, hledger), and between competent C programmers and lawyers, and between competent C programmers and typesetters, and between competent C programmers and desktop publishers, and between competent C programmers and the target audience for every other open source tool. It seems easier to assume that it just isn't a big deal. I don't really understand the issue myself, but it seems like the simplest explanation. It would be strange for this to be the one random area where 'competent C or C++ programmer' and 'domain expert' doesn't have an overlap. I mean maybe there's a pattern here with some other areas that lack good free software? I don't know. People complain about other 'creative' software lacking good free software tools but I think that's usually due to a lack of familiarity rather than a lack of quality in the software itself. Creatives seem to be more bothered by UI they're not used to than others are.