There is a point where measuring the user base has merit. If I wanted a laptop I would certainly buy the laptop bought by most people with the same needs. For

There is a point where measuring the user base has merit. If I wanted a laptop I would certainly buy the laptop bought by most people with the same needs. For tools like gimp a large user base is beneficial since people wanting to learn how to do photo editing of graphic design will google how to do that and the tools used make a difference, if the majority of users are using Photoshop and Illustrator unfortunately most of thr tutorials and courses will be tought using that and the industry will continue using it. If however your UI/UX isn't abysmal and you can effectively teach first principles using Gimp, courses and tutorials will come and so will the users. There's a reason blender became as popular as it is, it was good enough in the beginning and with more users came more funding and more/better developers and now it wouldn't surprise me if it's the preffered tool in the industry.