[Gimp-developer] Developer-User Disconnect

[Daniel Falk]

On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 20:35 -0500, Robert Krawitz wrote:
> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:42:49 -0500
>    From: Daniel Falk <daniel-gimpdevlist at mbx.zapto.org>
> 
>    >> Please do something to get in touch with users, I could never
>    >> honestly ever say theGimp could be a replacement for photoshop
>    >> ever if this continues.
> 
>    > Gimp may or may not be a Photoshop replacement. That depends on
>    > the user.  For me, it's a replacement because since I'm using it
>    > I'm not using Photoshop. But certain people want to keep using
>    > Photoshop. If your plan is using Photoshop for free, then Gimp
>    > it's not for you. If you need an image manipulation program, be
>    > welcome.  If you want Photoshop for Linux, which is a valid
>    > desire, you should start asking Adobe to port it, not Gimp coders
>    > to create a feature by feature clone.
>    >
>    > Anyway, I also think that a better communication between existing
>    > coders and users would be nice for certain situations.  But
>    > non-users-wanting-photoshop aren't gimp users. And I understand
>    > when a coder pisses off if one of these guys say "Gimp sucks
>    > because it hasn't X feature" and threatens not using Gimp if the
>    > coders don't do what he wants.
> 
>    I understand such things can piss off the people who are devoting
>    their own time to the project.  But if I'm understanding you right,
>    you're suggesting that users shouldn't hope for gimp to be as
>    feature-filled as photoshop.  But why not?  As a believer in
>    open-source, I want gimp to be the best it can be and I'm willing
>    to submit feature requests and bug reports to help get it that way.
>    I'd rather spend my time doing that than getting a proprietary
>    software package ported to linux by Adobe (not gonna happen!)
> 
> Don't confuse feature counts (my product has 101 features and yours
> has 100, so mine's better) or specific individual features that might
> or might not matter to a few people with overall product utility.  In
> particular, just because GIMP and Photoshop do some things differently
> doesn't make one better or worse than the other, just "different".
> 
> The GIMP developers aren't (at least for the most part) interested in
> building a Photoshop clone.  Nothing's stopping someone else from
> taking the code base and doing just that, but the GIMP team has its
> own vision.

Totally agree.  When I say as feature-filled, I'm not suggesting that
those features be implemented the same way.  That's what I would see as
a clone.  But if photoshop has useful features that solve a certain
problem, then I think the gimp team should want to solve the problem as
well, so long as it fits within the scope of the project.  Of course the
gimp team may have a totally different idea on how to solve that
problem.  That's where it stops being a clone.

> 
> Submitting feature requests by itself isn't usually a very productive
> endeavor for most projects.  There's no shortage of people with ideas;
> what's needed are people who can and will realize those ideas.  That
> doesn't mean that participating in discussions isn't useful, but if
> you want to help GIMP move along, you need to find more active ways of
> doing so -- programming is only one such way.

That's true.  There's probably not a shortage of people with ideas, but
I think there is often a shortage of people who have ideas that are good
and are practical.  But otherwise, I know what you mean.  Coming up with
the ideas is faster than programming those ideas, especially when no
work is done to actually to refine the idea.

> 
> Finally, to address more specifically your point about nested-window
> MDI (aka "window in window"): that paradigm may work on Windows
> (although it quickly grew tedious a dozen years ago when I used
> Pagemaker), but on Linux/UNIX it doesn't work.  One reason why that is
> specific to X (the X window system) is that the windows inside the
> parent window can't (at least at present) be managed by the window
> manager running under X: they have to be managed by the application
> itself.
> 
> There are a lot of different window managers available, and most of
> those window managers can be customized almost endlessly, and there is
> no one standard.  Not just decorations -- basic window behavior can be
> varied.  Not everyone likes "click to focus and raise" (i. e. you have
> to explicitly select a window, which raises it to the top).  For
> example, I use its polar opposite, focus strictly follows mouse with
> no raising of windows except on my explicit request (i. e. whatever
> window the mouse is in is the one that's active, even if it's
> partially buried under other windows).  What all this means is that
> the windows inside the container may behave very differently from what
> the user is accustomed to, which is very distracting (try using the
> newest version of acroread with multiple PDF files using focus follows
> mouse, and you'll see what I mean -- and yes, I know how to turn that
> off, but I've simply switched to kpdf instead).
> 
> Nested windows are also a pain to use if you want to have multiple
> applications in use simultaneously, because the big container hides
> all the other windows.  I prefer to either just live with the mess or
> use multiple virtual desktops.  But if you want to implement nested
> windows, go ahead -- if the GIMP folks don't want to accept the patch,
> you can distribute it yourself.

I think you either misunderstood me or misdirected your reply.  I agree
with you.  I really like gimp's system.


> 
>    I think it is important to open source projects that they value
>    their users and reach out to potential users.  It's good for a
>    project to have many people interested in it, even if those people
>    don't code.  I'm not saying that the GIMP doesn't value and reach
>    out.  I just want to establish the point that those are actually
>    good things to do in the first place.
> 
> Well, free software or open source isn't simply about freedom without
> responsibility.  You certainly have the freedom to use and modify the
> software without restriction, to redistribute it (in the case of GIMP,
> under exactly the same terms as the original) with or without
> modification, and so forth.  But with that freedom comes the
> responsibility to help the project along if you can, or at least to
> understand that if you're not going to actively help your ideas along
> that nobody else has the responsibility to do it for you.
> 
What you said here seems right.  I'm missing how it is a response to my
statement though.