I had some interesting email conversations with GIMP developers in the 1990s. I can't speak for now, but at the time it was a "classical" open source project. A

I had some interesting email conversations with GIMP developers in the 1990s. I can't speak for now, but at the time it was a "classical" open source project. AKA, it existed to scratch the developer's itch. It was never intended to compete with another product like Photoshop or any other product.