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I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question. "They" are a handful of maintainers doing re

I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question. "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. Take Øyvind Kolås, the maintainer and lead developer of babl/GEGL, which is the technology underlying GIMP 3.0. He's barely being paid for this work. Nowadays he has a patreon, which also is directly linked from the gimp.org website, encouraging you to directly support him[0][1]. Right now those patreon donations add up to about... $1300 a month. And the number used to be much lower when I first started donating. A lot of people here complain that we cannot directly give money to, say, the development Firefox. With GIMP you can directly support its core individual maintainer, and almost nobody does. [0] https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership [1] https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/

James_K 2y ago
Would giving him more money improve the quality of his output? He also seems to not be in charge of the UI which is the major problem area. It's also worth noting that I could buy a subscription to Photoshop if we're talking about paying money to have software developed.
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  With more money, he could leave his daily job and work full time on GIMP If you cannot / will not give money, you can also send patches: in most opensource projects, help is welcome
  - James_K 2y ago
    I get that this evangelism is useful, but it's also annoying. I'm also doing things with my life and I don't have the time to fix GIMP. My purpose in writing these comments is not to volunteer my time or money to the GIMP project, but to suggest they improve it by focusing on the many basic UI issues it has, which for some reason they haven't done in the last 20 years. Instead of laying the ground work for non-destructive editing, they should be making it so you can reliably click on text without selecting the thing behind.
    - cmyk_student 2y ago
      The challenge is that there's only so many volunteers contributing to GIMP, and lots of people with requests. The loudest/most frequent ones tend to be addressed first (as volunteers are able). For instance, I worked on non-destructive editing because so many people said it was an essential missing feature that also needed to be there 20 years ago. Now that it's implemented, I've seen a lot of happy people who appreciate it and what it does for their workflow. At the same time, that means there are new requests for the next "essential missing feature". :)
      - James_K 2y ago
        The idea that you can never make a good piece of software is backwards and wrong. There should come a point where your software has the essential features and reasonable UX. Producing software which does what the user wants without being actively hostile to them is the bare minimum. It doesn't take 20 years, it's not an endless process. If you spend 20 years doing it, you are managing your time badly. GIMP is managing their time badly. The "loudest/most frequent" requests is not a good metric to use because most of those issues are filed by software developers and not users.
        cmyk_student 2y ago
        To clarify, I wasn't talking about the developers' priorities as a whole. I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. And I can promise you, non-destructive editing was repeatedly requested by users, not just software developers. I have also seen a large number of users happy about the feature being implemented, as well as videos and screenshots of it being used effectively. It was a net positive in my opinion, even if there's more work to do in addition. That's not to say your particular issue won't be addressed of course! You're just the first person I've seen to make that specific complaint, compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc. What's been really nice about the RC1 release is that more members of the community are willing to try out 3.0 (compared to the various 2.99 releases) and give feedback. People use GIMP in lots of different ways, and if we don't use it in those ways then we don't see their specific problems.
- SiempreViernes 2y ago
  If you want to be a whiny customer then pay for commercial software and post your comments on their user forums, what are you doing here?
  - James_K 2y ago
    And if GIMP's proposition to its users is "you should use Photoshop instead", do you see why it won't succeed?
CharlesW 2y ago
> "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. If the name was changed to something with less of an ick factor, contributors would double. (For anyone who believes the acronym is coincidental, it's confirmed to be inspired by "The Gimp" from Pulp Fiction. https://web.archive.org/web/20201111191926/https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201111191926/https://www.xach....)
- krapp 2y ago
  >If the name was changed to something with less of an ick factor, contributors would double. No they wouldn't. Most users of free and open source software don't contribute anything, regardless of the name or critical nature of the software they use, much less enough for developers to take a full time income for their work. And most users of GIMP couldn't care less about the name either way.
- squigz 2y ago
  That's quite an assertion to make, probably without evidence?
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    It's purely anecdotal if that wasn't clear. In my many conversations with folks where GIMP has been mentioned, the same two issues always come up: (1) the anachronistic user experience, and (2) the anachronistic name. Most of the people who could help with (1) aren't interested in a project with (2) on their CV. A good exercise is to imagine seeing a Show HN for the project RETARD or CRIPPLE, and how proud you'd be sharing the details of your work on RETARD with a prospective employer.

James_K 2y ago

Would giving him more money improve the quality of his output? He also seems to not be in charge of the UI which is the major problem area. It's also worth noting that I could buy a subscription to Photoshop if we're talking about paying money to have software developed.

JackSlateur 2y ago
With more money, he could leave his daily job and work full time on GIMP If you cannot / will not give money, you can also send patches: in most opensource projects, help is welcome
- James_K 2y ago
  I get that this evangelism is useful, but it's also annoying. I'm also doing things with my life and I don't have the time to fix GIMP. My purpose in writing these comments is not to volunteer my time or money to the GIMP project, but to suggest they improve it by focusing on the many basic UI issues it has, which for some reason they haven't done in the last 20 years. Instead of laying the ground work for non-destructive editing, they should be making it so you can reliably click on text without selecting the thing behind.
  - cmyk_student 2y ago
    The challenge is that there's only so many volunteers contributing to GIMP, and lots of people with requests. The loudest/most frequent ones tend to be addressed first (as volunteers are able). For instance, I worked on non-destructive editing because so many people said it was an essential missing feature that also needed to be there 20 years ago. Now that it's implemented, I've seen a lot of happy people who appreciate it and what it does for their workflow. At the same time, that means there are new requests for the next "essential missing feature". :)
    - James_K 2y ago
      The idea that you can never make a good piece of software is backwards and wrong. There should come a point where your software has the essential features and reasonable UX. Producing software which does what the user wants without being actively hostile to them is the bare minimum. It doesn't take 20 years, it's not an endless process. If you spend 20 years doing it, you are managing your time badly. GIMP is managing their time badly. The "loudest/most frequent" requests is not a good metric to use because most of those issues are filed by software developers and not users.
      - cmyk_student 2y ago
        To clarify, I wasn't talking about the developers' priorities as a whole. I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. And I can promise you, non-destructive editing was repeatedly requested by users, not just software developers. I have also seen a large number of users happy about the feature being implemented, as well as videos and screenshots of it being used effectively. It was a net positive in my opinion, even if there's more work to do in addition. That's not to say your particular issue won't be addressed of course! You're just the first person I've seen to make that specific complaint, compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc. What's been really nice about the RC1 release is that more members of the community are willing to try out 3.0 (compared to the various 2.99 releases) and give feedback. People use GIMP in lots of different ways, and if we don't use it in those ways then we don't see their specific problems.
SiempreViernes 2y ago
If you want to be a whiny customer then pay for commercial software and post your comments on their user forums, what are you doing here?
- James_K 2y ago
  And if GIMP's proposition to its users is "you should use Photoshop instead", do you see why it won't succeed?

CharlesW 2y ago

> "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. If the name was changed to something with less of an ick factor, contributors would double. (For anyone who believes the acronym is coincidental, it's confirmed to be inspired by "The Gimp" from Pulp Fiction. https://web.archive.org/web/20201111191926/https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201111191926/https://www.xach....)

krapp 2y ago
>If the name was changed to something with less of an ick factor, contributors would double. No they wouldn't. Most users of free and open source software don't contribute anything, regardless of the name or critical nature of the software they use, much less enough for developers to take a full time income for their work. And most users of GIMP couldn't care less about the name either way.
squigz 2y ago
That's quite an assertion to make, probably without evidence?
- CharlesW 2y ago
  It's purely anecdotal if that wasn't clear. In my many conversations with folks where GIMP has been mentioned, the same two issues always come up: (1) the anachronistic user experience, and (2) the anachronistic name. Most of the people who could help with (1) aren't interested in a project with (2) on their CV. A good exercise is to imagine seeing a Show HN for the project RETARD or CRIPPLE, and how proud you'd be sharing the details of your work on RETARD with a prospective employer.