Just a reminder. The Gimp "ecosystem" is mostly made of open source software. This is nice, for users of course, but also for people who want to make their own version of things.

However, when such modified code is shared with others, it is the duty of the new authors to clearly label the code as being a different version and identify themselves as the authors (they can of course give proper attribution to the original source). Otherwise, several versions that looks like the same code start spreading, and only a "diff" application can distinguish them (and this won't tell which is the original and which has been changed).

Some open-source licenses make that a rule (the open-source licenses are as binding as an unfathomable EULA from Microsoft).

The GPL (which is used by Gimp and most of the Gimp scripts/plugins):

The Apache licence:


In addition, when they redistribute the code, the authors have two moral obligations:

1) provide support to users

2) triage all the bugs reported to them, and identify which are caused by the changes and which are from the original code. This may require more than a superficial understanding of the code that has been modified...

A logical extension of the GPL is the 'creative commons' license. Then what you make with your free software can become the building blocks of something else.

The dystopians will probably win in the end because the human ecosystem is just the creation of bacteria and they were kind enough to outsource some of the work to humans. They are well on their way to creating a world ideally suited to bacteria but isn't that where they started?

CreativeCommons is mostly applying the concepts of the free software licenses to other bits of intellectual property (images, music...).

The problem is not having the code used by someone else (to make something hopefully better), but someone making changes to the code without assuming the responsibility for it. Then the initial author is requested to fix problems that aren't part of his code.

2 things can happen in this situation - somebody tries to make the code better and fails, or they actually make the code better. There is no responsibility on the part of the original creator to repair mistakes or bugs because ownership was never assumed with open source code.
If you fix any problems or not is entirely up to you. Probably the coding is so bad they don't want to put their name to it. Version numbers may help but they are probably ignored by the bedroom hackers.