http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entr ... -kill-gimp

Interesting stuff, read the comments too. Looks like the gimp community is becoming glowingly discontent
with how the gimp develops [I take it, it's mostly for the uncertainty of 2.10 release date]. At least I can't
recall such rants toward the gimp devs a year or two ago.

No

The article header is an overstatement made on purpose [knowing Prokoudin's reverse psychology approach]
Of course it won't. The thing is that articles like this is the only pieces of information we can get from the developers,
since the news feed from them becomes very tight at times, i'd say airtight.
Even on gimp mailing list they tend to elude head-on questions, so quite a few people can see the whole picture.

They are not eluding questions... they are developers, so they know that the only answer to the usual question "when will you be ready to deliver", is "I don't know", until they deliver. In commercial products, the management sets a deadline, so the software is published despite known bugs.

I didn't mean questions about the release date. Even the most impatient users quit asking this awhile ago.
E.g., try to find out the GEGL porting readiness (20-50-70%?), all you'll get is a silence.




Blender and Krita teams set deadlines too. Never heard of a single complex software without bugs.
When the proprietary software release their products with known bugs none of them are the showstoppers.

i did'nt like Adobe, i did'nt like Google and last but not least i did'nt like virtualized applications ... ah and i like Clouds when they are where they should have to be - in the sky.
If someone has the need to sit in a golden cage, so Adobe & Google are the right choice. I, for myself, did'nt need a sit in a golden cage or a knit around my neck - so GIMP is the best choice "for me"

I'd say "no" to the original question. The main differentiator between PS and GIMP is still there - cost.


While I agree with your sentiment about the lack of information, that question has an answer: http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Hacking:Porti ... rs_to_GEGL and as for the last anti-dev rant, all I have to say is Save/Export

I think ofnuts is right in saying that the silence is mostly down to not knowing.

GIMP development is said to be a meritocracy, but this has lead to the situation where there is no externally observable leadership/project management.

I'd be all for Alexandre changing his role from defending the developers to providing a degree of leadership.

Kevin

I think there are going to be some big maybe even huge surprises for GIMP and PS users when GIMP-2.10 arrives. I also do not think it will be too much longer before it's release.My guess is early 2015. GEGL is going to be a huge milestone. Many professionals presently use GIMP and i think you will see that many more will in the future.

Improvements are always welcome but I'm more than satisfied with Gimp, G'MIC and all the talented coders supporting it. As for the article at Libre Graphics World, Photoshop and Gimp have never been in competition anyway.

I agree Odin, well said.

Not only is the headline an overstatement, it's kinda misleading. Since Photoshop is not being ported to Linux as FOSS, there is no chance of it replacing or killing off GIMP.

If you think about it, the entire Saas/Cloud model is nothing new. It's basically centralized computing and a reinvention of the 40 year old mainframe/terminal model. The only difference is the technology used to implement the model, such as virtualization, the connectivity method utilized and the addition of a graphical smart terminal (which isn't new either). From my perspective, it's a huge step backwards.

The future was supposed to be distributed computing, with a super computer on every desktop. Bloat and inefficient software development killed off that concept. Nowadays, you need a multicore processor and a wad of RAM just to access most websites, which utilize 100's of worthless scripts designed to track your every movement and get in the way of you accessing the information you need. It really sux!

What we never actually saw come to fruition was a good distributed processing OS to take advantage of the power off each node. Perhaps eventually, with the rise of modern multicore CPUs, we will finally see mainstream operating systems with proper support for distributed processing. In my opinion, this is the direction computers should be moving toward, not a reinvention of the mainframe model of centralized computing.

In my opinion, the current rise of the SaaS and cloud computing is not to advance computer science and computing technology. It's being implemented as a means of control.

GO LINUX! you will never go back.

Although Photoshop is an irreverent comparison to Gimp I am a fan of Adobe. I applaud them for what they have done for the graphics community. On a different note they are also strong contributors in the web community with Brackets.

I don't know all the good things Adobe has done for the web community but Flash is pure evil.
If I could excise it fully from my computer, I would.

[rant]
As a layman user, if I get this right, Adobe used to give me software for money. I spend hundreds of dollars to have a piece of their PS pie at home, on my desktop, whatever. I even got a disc of it to frame and wall-mount. Now they're not doing that and they're charging what, the same money to just 'borrow' the program? So, all I'm getting is bupkiss. Very good. I'll stick with gimp. Meh.

What get's me is, how no one else is realizing they're being ripped off by this. No outrage? Just monthly cloud fee's huh? Well it's not that expensive.
[/rant]

I will stick to Gimp, I don't want to have to relearn a graphics program that does all I need it to do.

this chrome-ps-thingy has nothing to do with android or linux, it is the streamed M$-Version with no print-possibility and saving only on Google-cloud - who needs something like this?
a bad joke to generate some money, nothing more

Why do people believe these things anyway, it is beyond me. If you are happy and satisfied with something why not stick to it instead of jumping into something you know nothing about and nine times out of ten it is bogus, or as silk said, a way to generate money from people. Of coarse they prey on gullible people.
GIMP is here to stay and it is getting better and better each day, thanks to all the developers and programmers out there.

The article does not claim Photoshop will kill GIMP. The point of the article is that software as a service (SaaS) is the trend, with more people using web-based applications instead of installing programs on their computers. The article is asking how FOSS will adapt to an SaaS market.

The comments to the article are a different matter. They contain a lot of griping about GIMP development. And some defense of GIMP. I think it boils down to two basic questions:

1. What do FOSS developers owe to end users?

2. What do end users owe to FOSS developers?

The glib answer is, nothing. Developers can do whatever they darn well please, and users can take it or leave it. A nice, neat, libertarian approach. However, the end result would be software that's useless. Where's the benefit of that?

There needs to be give and take between users and developers. It's like dancing: one partner can take the lead, but not to the extent that someone is left abandoned alone in the middle of the dance floor... while the other partner rants about dancers who can't keep up.

I am not a programmer. What is my proper role in supporting GIMP? Is it to whine constantly about waiting for 16-bit color? Or to cheerlead every minor bugfix like it's the second coming?
Yipee it's version 2.8.927 !!!!

I think it's good to raise this issue and talk about it. All I know is, I use GIMP and I am grateful to the developers... but I can't recommend it to anyone who wants state-of-the-art photo editing. I hope this changes soon, but meanwhile I am not surprised if some people are abandoning GIMP for more up-to-date software. Closing our eyes and pretending nobody's leaving is not a good answer.

Stuff I learned from this thread:

1) Creating roadmap page and a few other pages in the wiki, that specifically, in details, provide information about the state of affairs in development, then pointing everyone to these pages has the net effect of not providing answers.

2) There are no people on Earth who love Linux, dislike GIMP, and can't run state-of-the-art Photoshop on WINE because of bugs.

3) Early 2015 sounds like a sensible 2.10 release date while there's not even a 2.9.0 which is blocked by a release of GEGL which is blocked by incomplete changes.

4) Photoshop and GIMP have never been in competition anyway, contrary to pages and pages of online discussions where people keep comparing matching features (lots of them) and point out this and that (mostly that).

5) Chrome OS has nothing to do with Linux, while being based on it. Chromebooks, therefore, don't, in fact, run Linux, although it's exactly what they do.

But most importantly, of course,

6) I had a reverse psychology approach all along.

Oh well