The something that sucks is lack of money. Paying developers to do work definitely helps. It’s unfair to level unconstructive critique at the end result when it hasn’t ever had the same opportunity to thrive that the paid software you’re comparing it to had.
Serif produced a nice software suite by paying developers. They got that money from investors who made it by exploiting people (like every corporation) and then exploited their workers and customers in turn. While this resulted in a relatively nicer alternative to Adobe shit, it still isn’t ideal.
Imagine if GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, and Krita all had the kind of financial support that corporations do. Blender and the community supporting them are figuring it out to some extent, and now Blender has essentially either matched or eclipsed the corporate competition. This is absolutely possible for other FOSS software, but we the community need to be there for them financially too.
The lead developer of GIMP currently receives about €1,200 per month in donations via PayPal, and the entire GIMP project receives even more via LiberaPay. Admittedly, this is not really ‘their paid job’.
But now I’ve had to listen to open source fans for over twenty years saying that open source software shows that you don’t need a lot of money, just a lot of volunteers to do much better work together. I don’t doubt that (for example) Blender is excellent software, donations or not (they didn’t always exist). But why does this concept fail when it comes to image editing software?
Yeah it’s definitely not just a money thing. Some projects and communities like Gimp have been historically dismissive of design as a concept. Where as Blender has not despite starting in a bad place design wise. It’s come so far.
Gimp needs a philosophy change more than anything but it will never happen with half the community screaming “it’s just different” anytime someone has valid criticisms. Design literacy is as real as code literacy. Thankfully there seems to be lots of other graphic projects these days that might fill the void.
The something that sucks is lack of money. Paying developers to do work definitely helps. It’s unfair to level unconstructive critique at the end result when it hasn’t ever had the same opportunity to thrive that the paid software you’re comparing it to had.
Serif produced a nice software suite by paying developers. They got that money from investors who made it by exploiting people (like every corporation) and then exploited their workers and customers in turn. While this resulted in a relatively nicer alternative to Adobe shit, it still isn’t ideal.
Imagine if GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, and Krita all had the kind of financial support that corporations do. Blender and the community supporting them are figuring it out to some extent, and now Blender has essentially either matched or eclipsed the corporate competition. This is absolutely possible for other FOSS software, but we the community need to be there for them financially too.
The lead developer of GIMP currently receives about €1,200 per month in donations via PayPal, and the entire GIMP project receives even more via LiberaPay. Admittedly, this is not really ‘their paid job’.
But now I’ve had to listen to open source fans for over twenty years saying that open source software shows that you don’t need a lot of money, just a lot of volunteers to do much better work together. I don’t doubt that (for example) Blender is excellent software, donations or not (they didn’t always exist). But why does this concept fail when it comes to image editing software?
Yeah it’s definitely not just a money thing. Some projects and communities like Gimp have been historically dismissive of design as a concept. Where as Blender has not despite starting in a bad place design wise. It’s come so far.
Gimp needs a philosophy change more than anything but it will never happen with half the community screaming “it’s just different” anytime someone has valid criticisms. Design literacy is as real as code literacy. Thankfully there seems to be lots of other graphic projects these days that might fill the void.
Which one could replace GIMP? I might be curious. I saw a few development projects, but I don’t know their current state.