On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Stephen J Baker wrote: > No - I think some people may percieve it as "finished" - although I Even if the GIMP had every feature of the current versions of Adobe PhotoShop, Corel Painter, and Jasc Paint Shop combined it still wouldn't be finished. There is always something more, more features more file formats, more platforms. > personally know that's not true, many people are quite happy with GIMP > as it is today. The GIMP is quite simply the best Free Software, Open Source Raster Graphics tool out there but I want MORE! I hope the GIMP will (eventually) become the best Raster Graphics tool bar none. > As a committed OpenSource developer who might have been interested in > working on GIMP, I have to say that the level of acrimony and hostility > that I see between developers is VERY off-putting. (I've been lurking here > for quite some time). > I don't know whether you all believe that - or how you do anything > about it if you do believe it. But for me, it's the number one reason > not to get into mainstream GIMP development. I feel that way too, unfortunately it is so hard not to react in the same way and get off the downward spiral. I only very grudginly subscribed to the developer list at all. I feel that the active lead developer(s) need to admit this is not a democracy and be the bad guy, be the benevolent dictator, be the leader and take decisions that move the GIMP forward. > I'm only one data point though - others may have quite different > reasons to stay away. I am sure there are other factors too but I tend to believe that the hostility is a deciding factor that turns off new developers. > One thing that would revive GIMP's fortunes immensely would be to > merge GIMP and FilmGIMP back into one package. I know that's a Not as impractical as trying to merge Gnome and KDE but they have freedesktop.org and are increasingly working together on shared standards so GIMP and CinePaint should be able to work together too. If you look at the history of FilmGIMP it was on an older Hollywood branch of the GIMP and remerging the branches would have been very difficult even then and the GIMP developers seem to favour waiting for GEGL to provide the 32-bit image support. The port of the GIMP to Gnome2 and various restructuring of FilmGIMP now CinePaint (they are gradually creeping towards using more C++ for example) have made the two increasingly incompatible. > difficult task - and a highly contentious issue too - but if there I dont even understand why it is contentious anymore. The split has happened and people need to accept it and move on. Blame, accusations or resentment help no one. One the emotional issues are out of the way it just becomes an issue of how willing people are to what needs to be done. > are only 'N' GIMP developers in the world, you'd really hope that > N/2 of them were not off working on FilmGIMP. Keeping a shared standardised Plugin API might be a realistic achievable goal and help minimize duplication of effort but again the question is if there are people willing and able to do the work. There are file format incompatibilities in XCF which Sven recently 'brought up' on the CinePaint list, without 32-bit colour depth there is only a limited amount that GIMP can do but if there are people willing and able to do the work... The next generation file format will have to consider interoperability with third party applications and make some compromises for the greater good (use existing standards wherever possible would clearly be a good star) and hopefully CinePaint will be considered and kept in mind as part of this process. Sincerly Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
