[HN Gopher] Funding GIMP developers for sustainable development
___________________________________________________________________
Funding GIMP developers for sustainable development
Author : Vinnl
Score : 217 points
Date : 2021-07-28 07:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gimp.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gimp.org)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| As someone else noted, there is a no-code startup that just
| raised 50M and GIMP struggles to fund two developers.
|
| I have often thought that one of the most effective ways, if I
| was say a Texan oil billionaire, most effective ways of spreading
| my world view would be to pay people to code useful free
| government and non-gov tools - all software is opinionated- as
| texan billionaire i would want it to have my opinions
|
| Re: Texan Billionaire I just remembered the second Harry Palmer
| film.
| 10GBps wrote:
| Woosh, sarcasm not detected.
|
| :)
| fmax30 wrote:
| Why do you think that the existence of Gnome requires blame? I
| think gnome is one of the better FOSS projects out there.
| wwarner wrote:
| I read the appeal and gave.
| [deleted]
| rkangel wrote:
| I'm confused by what appears to be a contradiction at the end.
|
| These are consecutive sentences:
|
| > Note that it is also possible to fund several contributors
| through GIMP Liberapay account as an interesting alternative.
|
| > What these donations through GNOME still cannot do is funding
| paid development, so if that's what you want, please fund the
| developers directly as explained above.
|
| I would rather put money into a single pot for GIMP contributors
| than have to chose and donate to individual contributors. Can I
| do that through the liberapay link (https://liberapay.com/GIMP/)?
| Most things suggest that I can, but the text makes it a little
| confusing.
| modzu wrote:
| or don't.. and fund krita or GMIC instead!
| toastal wrote:
| I actually get this sentiment. I don't find too much use in
| GIMP specifically anymore. darktable/RawTherapee can more than
| pull their weight in photo editing and can handle RAW non-
| destructively. Krita is better optimized for drawing. Hugin
| stitches and stacks images better. You may as well use
| ImageMagick for resizing. GIMP being a jack of all trades, has
| left it the master of none for me. Maybe had they had more
| funds 6-8 years ago, it would be in a better spot but right
| now, I'd rather throw donations at these other projects.
| frusciante19 wrote:
| Maybe at some point someone will realize that they can sell a
| piece of software.
| MrDresden wrote:
| As an occasional user of GIMP I'll gladly donate to the
| developers. This is a piece of software that has made me money,
| so it is only fair I give back.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Are conferences good value for money (as a use for free software
| donations/funding)? Like I get that they're good, I like
| attending conferences. But if I could choose between employing
| someone full-time for a month (especially somewhere with low cost
| of living like India or Eastern Europe) and buying flights and a
| hotel room for a weekend, I think I'd choose the former.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I don't know about conferences per-say, but something like
| LibreGraphicsMeeting is, as people developing lots of open
| source graphics get together and swap ideas.
|
| Luckily there is one there has been some funding, at least for
| travel.
| dcminter wrote:
| Just FYI "per-say" should be "per se" - Latin for "by
| itself."
| abhinav22 wrote:
| (I agree with your opinion)
|
| But is the article about conferences? I thought it was about
| directly supporting some of the developers of GIMP, perhaps I
| misread
| erikerikson wrote:
| I believe that was a reference to restrictions on funding
| coming from GNOME
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > But if I could choose between employing someone full-time for
| a month (especially somewhere with low cost of living like
| India or Eastern Europe) and buying flights and a hotel room
| for a weekend, I think I'd choose the former.
|
| A month's worth of a bad programmer's time might be worth a lot
| less than meeting motivated good software engineers at a
| conference and potentially turning one or two into
| contributors.
| meibo wrote:
| Conferences are essential in building a healthy community - and
| seeing who you actually "work for", especially as an open
| source developer. Sure, you can sit on Zoom for an hour or two
| and hold a talk, but you really can't beat the face-to-face
| experience.
|
| I think it's something you need to experience to see the value
| in.
| mlang23 wrote:
| In my experience, conferences are a very nice to have, unique
| experiences, interesting people. But productivity? No. When
| it comes to being productive, I get far more done sitting at
| my desk at home. I totally understand that conferences are a
| really nice thing to go to for contributors. But its more a
| sort of compensation for unpaied work. At some point, you are
| invited to go to a foreign country, and you get a sort of
| geek-holiday. Thats nice. But I never considered it essential
| for my contributions.
|
| In fact, my impression actually turned around when the "bring
| your children" thing started to be normal. I vividly remember
| a few talks at DebConf where I was not able to follow the
| speaker because of verbal small children in the talk room.
| Since then, I really really prefer to listen to talk
| recordings at home.
| baby wrote:
| I always find conferences to be a real boost for
| productivity personally. You always come out full of ideas
| and papers to read or implement. The motivation and passion
| of others can be contaminating as well.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > You always come out full of ideas and papers to read or
| implement.
|
| is it really what GIMP needs though ?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > productivity? No. When it comes to being productive, I
| get far more done sitting at my desk at home.
|
| It depends. For creating production-quality code certainly
| true.
|
| But for design discussions, feature priotisation etc. an in
| person meeting often is better. Also such events /can/ lead
| to interesting results from hacking sessions where people
| collaboratively spin out ideas and code stuff. That code
| typically needs cleanup, but can spark ideas. Way home from
| a conference for me often was the time where I had creative
| new ideas :)
| throwanem wrote:
| I feel like, in your third sentence, you may have typed
| "enjoying" and intended "employing".
| watt wrote:
| And also maybe "former"? Is conference really better value
| than employing somebody for a month?
| Y_Y wrote:
| Maybe I should have invested in a proof-reader. Thanks for
| both of the corrections.
| tudorw wrote:
| Proofreader, ahem, sorry, could not resist, I am not
| really bothered...
| baby wrote:
| Now that photopea is a thing, do people still use gimp?
| KronisLV wrote:
| As nice as Photopea is, it's browser only. Furthermore, GIMP
| provides a variety of different plugins, extensibility options,
| hardware support for graphics tablets etc.
|
| So the answer is yes, GIMP is still a lovely piece of free
| software that's utilized by numerous people out there to great
| effect.
| npteljes wrote:
| Photopea is not a GIMP replacement, since it's not free
| software.
| someperson wrote:
| GIMP needs a major user-interface overhaul like Edward Snowden
| said on Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1416778909358731266?lang=...
| petee wrote:
| I don't see how Edward Snowden is relevant...if you don't like
| the UI, just say that.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I'm guessing that Blender has more funding available to it
| and/or has retained more of its senior developers, compared to
| GIMP.
|
| Expecting that a piece of software undertakes an ambitious UI
| overhaul (which is no small feat) without one or both of those
| resources shows, to me, a lack of understanding.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| From my historic experience with both, the GIMP project
| always seemed actively hostile to UI change suggestions, and
| even keeping their name is a thumb in the eye to going
| mainstream. Blender has been more about being a good product
| from the very start, I've been following it since before it
| was open sourced. It's current success is a path it started
| walking way before it had lots of devs and resources.
| Mandelmus wrote:
| Blender was _extremely_ hostile to UI change suggestions as
| well until only recently when they changed things
| drastically with the insanely successful Blender 2.8
| project. From then on donations (including corporate
| sponsors) grew massively. Blender has made massive strides
| in the past few years, and much of it can be attributed to
| them changing their stance on UI /UX changes.
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree. Two things come to mind regarding the interface of
| GIMP.
|
| One is what you wrote - that it needs a product manager and
| tons of manhours just to do what's essentially a refactor.
| Not to mention that GIMP devs said that many UI changes would
| imply backend changes too, because of limitations. And they
| are working on those limitations, among other things. Second
| part of the point is that Adobe must have like 50 people work
| on Photoshop, and I guess even more when you consider the
| overlaps with their other products. Compare this to the
| active contributor number to GIMP.
|
| The second point is that many people compare it to Photoshop
| like Photoshop is a gold standard of usability. It's just as
| a nightmare as GIMP if you're not used to it. So, it's not
| really GIMP's fault that people are used to something else.
| dagw wrote:
| I think the fact that Blender has had same person steering
| its development since the days when it was an in-house tool
| for a small animation studio makes a tremendous difference.
|
| The other factor is that Blender was always a tool by and for
| actual companies doing real commercial work and understands
| those needs. GIMP on the other started as a university
| project that got picked up the GNU project, and has always
| been more of a 'research' project.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It should not be underestimated how much Blender is helped by
| the project management by Ton.
|
| As far as I know GIMP does not have a face for the press,
| does not organize conferences, has no one contacting
| businesses for funding. And it has an unfortunate joke name.
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| If it's any consolation, "Blender" is a actually negative
| word in German ("deceiver"; someone who blinds others).
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The same is true for Poser
| (https://www.posersoftware.com)
| lenkite wrote:
| The name seems to be fitting for a 3d computer graphics
| toolset.
| mschuetz wrote:
| GIMP's use interface is the reason I switched to Krita. Nothing
| ever worked as expected in GIMP.
| pjmlp wrote:
| A typical example is the need to use paths for what are basic
| geometric tooling in almost every other graphical
| application.
| [deleted]
| npteljes wrote:
| GIMP needs funding to do that. It's not easy to turn a ship
| around.
| rvz wrote:
| Or some would rather at best use Krita, if not continue to use
| Photoshop running in Wine.
| glandium wrote:
| Almost not joking: I wonder if it wouldn't be better if Blender
| grew image editing features. After all, it now has video
| editing features, and I hear they're decent.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Photoshop and Illustrator's UIs are so illogical, arbitrary and
| tooltip-free they give skilled users Stockholm syndrome. GIMP's
| UI is logical and good, and you have 10x the odds of finding
| something you've never looked for before quickly than you do
| with Photoshop.
|
| The GIMP's weakness is color management.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I've never used Photoshop so can't comment on that, but I've
| always found GIMP's UI to be simple and straightforward.. but
| maybe that's because I've used it for so long. I really don't
| have a problem with it.
|
| I'd rather GIMP focused on adding features that Photoshop and
| other competitors have.
| benrbray wrote:
| Indeed. I really want to like GIMP, but it doesn't hold a
| candle to my old copy of Photoshop CS4 from ten years ago. From
| what I can recall, the GIMP UI has hardly changed since then
| too.
|
| I suppose they're probably constrained by what is possible with
| GTK? Basically it seems like Linux needs a better standard for
| user interfaces -- I can't think of a GTK app that doesn't have
| awkard position/spacing/layout issues.
| glandium wrote:
| Pretty ironic, considering GTK was originally created for
| GIMP (that's even what the G stood for back then: the GIMP
| ToolKit).
| daptaq wrote:
| I always smile when thinking about the fact that GTK stands
| for "GNU is not Unix ... is not Unix Image Manimulation
| Program ToolKit"
| daptaq wrote:
| > From what I can recall, the GIMP UI has hardly changed
| since then too.
|
| There have actually been changes, and even if they aren't
| major, someone like me who has never used anything but GIMP
| was annoyed/slightly confused by them. I don't know what the
| issue with GIMP is, besides tools that Photoshop appears to
| have or has better implementations for. My impressions is
| that it is mostly Photoshop users, that are expecting
| something else, or am I mistaken?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> My impressions is that it is mostly Photoshop users,
| that are expecting something else, or am I mistaken?_
|
| I use GIMP for my (modest) editing needs, and I like it.
| But some of the behaviour is.... weird.
|
| For example, if you've got a region selected and you use
| the flood fill tool, it will only fill pixels within that
| region. OK, that's logical enough, a tool only applies to
| selected pixels, right?
|
| But if you've got a region selected and you use the move
| tool, it'll move the entire layer. If you want to move only
| the pixels in the selected region, you gotta convert it to
| a floating selection.
|
| And after you've moved your floating selection, you want to
| select a different region to move, so you drag out a new
| selection. Not so fast, your floating region has now
| vanished. You gotta defloat the selection by selecting
| nothing. But you can't do that by choosing 'None' in the
| 'Select' menu, that's greyed out for some reason.
|
| I'm sure these behaviours all make sense to a developer or
| expert user - but nobody's going to be telling their
| friends that GIMP is easy to pick up :)
| jcelerier wrote:
| Did you try Krita ? https://krita.org/en/features/highlights/
| (the doc is great too: https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/
| getting_started/naviga...)
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I just noticed they don't even have screenshots on their
| website. That's horrible in my opinion. I'm not using a program
| where I have to actively search for 3rd party websites to find
| some pictures of the UI.
| BaRRaKID wrote:
| This. This is the biggest reason why I don't use GIMP more
| often. The tooling is great, but the usability is atrocious. I
| would give them all the money for a UI overhaul.
| thrwaeasddsaf wrote:
| There's also some low-hanging fruit if someone wants to
| contribute. E.g. the developer docs are rather outdated. I
| recently implemented AMD FSR as a Gimp plugin but all the docs
| led to code that resulted in a slew of deprecation warnings. Also
| poor performance and some thing just not working right at all
| (tile cache). I kinda got frustrated with it and dropped the gimp
| parts altogether, but if I had more time, it shouldn't be hard to
| figure out and maybe improve the docs or write an up to date
| tutorial.
| southerntofu wrote:
| I think you're not the first person facing this issue. If you
| feel like it, organizing a hackathon around it, so that you and
| others can update the docs and polish your respective plugins
| would be a huge contribution! Speaking as someone who is not a
| GIMP contributor myself.
| rho4 wrote:
| Biggest mistake of free software: It's too much hassle to donate.
| Show me a PayPal yearly subscription confirmation dialog on first
| startup for something less than 10 dollars, and if it takes 2
| clicks at most and less than 10 seconds, you will get my money.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Well, it's not exactly THAT simple, because first as a project
| you need to have a registered non-profit organization as well
| as a bank account. Then, you need to be registered with Paypal,
| and then once everything is setup and you've chosen Paypal as
| your main avenue of donations, they're going to shut you down
| because everyone doing something remotely good gets shut down
| from that capitalist cauldron of evil.
|
| So in fact you need to be on Liberapay, Patreon, Tippee,
| OpenCollective, Paypal, HelloAsso and more in order to be sure
| you're not going to lose your source of donations from one day
| to the next. I mean if only every finance services provider was
| as transparent and benevolent as Liberapay, all would be fine.
| But we live in a grim world, and even Liberapay was almost shut
| down due to not finding a suitable finance service provider
| after Mangopay threw them out.
|
| That's why i truly appreciate when some established non-profits
| help gather funds for smaller projects. For example, the
| disroot.org hosting coop redirects some funds to free-software
| projects they either use directly or encourage their users to
| use. What i appreciate even more, is when i can donate cash in
| person to volunteers during free-software conferences, and/or
| buy a souvenir like a nice t-shirt... That's truly the only way
| i know where my money is going, cryptocurrencies aside.
| petee wrote:
| I agree on the PayPal front...I don't have a Patreon account,
| so it's not just donating, I have to click "join", which is a
| quick turn off
| lixtra wrote:
| I agree that convenience is key. For me that is not PayPal. I
| prefer to support some projects on Patreon.
| devwastaken wrote:
| 1. Paypal 2. Patreon 3. Stripe 4. Bitcoin, XLM, etc. Just do
| all the cryptos. 5. Contacts so larger donors can work out
| large donations or recurring donation plans via other methods.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is something that can easily be argued. Not every project
| wants a donation, for one. Management of donations is also not
| straightforward - in case of GIMP, the project donations are
| managed by Gnome.
|
| Second point: why show it on the first start? People don't
| trust or like the software at first, so they would just click X
| and begin using the software. Some would even think it's
| intrusive.
|
| Rather, I've seen solutions where the software would ask for
| money right after it's been useful to the user. Duplicati for
| example would tell you to donate, suggested amounts, right
| after it successfully restored a backup.
| mixedCase wrote:
| > in case of GIMP, the project donations are managed by
| Gnome.
|
| I'm sorry, I believe the article directly contradicts your
| statement since its mentioned they receive donations outside
| of GNOME, in platforms such as Liberapay, and it's the only
| way to pay for actual development.
| npteljes wrote:
| It's complicated. The GIMP donation page lists multiple
| donation avenues, but if you wish to donate to the GIMP
| project in general, that's the one that's managed by Gnome.
| I was referencing this paragraph:
| https://www.gimp.org/donating/#donate-to-the-project
| ipaddr wrote:
| That is complicated. I see why they are struggling to get
| donations. UI/UX matters.
| gfiorav wrote:
| > Second point: why show it on the first start? People don't
| trust or like the software at first
|
| No one donates to software they don't trust. By the time they
| read the donation banner and consider it, its because they
| use the software and trust it.
|
| This should be as direct and hassle free as possible, I agree
| with OP.
| Joeboy wrote:
| The expression "fork over" was very confusing in this context.
| I think you're using it in the sense of "hand over money" here.
| amelius wrote:
| I wish I could fork my money ...
| brnt wrote:
| With shitcoins, you can :)
| rho4 wrote:
| thanks, adjusted
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| What, you don't want a one-time donation of 2 dollars worth of
| bitcoin?
| scandox wrote:
| I found it really easy to pay them 10$ per month. Clicked the
| paypal "P" in the top right corner and set it up in a few
| clicks. The main busy work was logging in to Paypal since I
| don't stay logged in there and use 2FA.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Has anyone reached out to the two creators of the GIMP?
|
| They're worth many hundreds of millions of dollars from their
| time at Google, a successful exit to Square, and their eventual
| exit with Cockroachdb (and they deserve every penny of it)
| pengaru wrote:
| I feel like the distributions have completely dropped the ball in
| this regard.
|
| They're positioned ideally to at least have some measure of what
| packages are most frequently installed. Even with the use of
| volunteer public mirrors that share no access logs with the
| distributor, the package management architecture could be
| structured to consult distro-controlled metadata servers in
| locating the mirrors and preserving some visibility into which
| packages are most installed. They control the package tooling,
| they should have considered this.
|
| With even vague knowledge of which packages are most used, they
| could be distributing donations to those upstream projects. They
| obviously already have the dependency graph as well, so even
| without popularity metrics, can already know which packages are
| cornerstones (kernel, libc, openssl, systemd, mesa immediately
| come to mind).
|
| The distro installers and package management tools should be
| providing convenient ways for end-users to donate via whatever
| mechanisms, paypal, patreon, bitcoin, etc. Just give me one
| mechanism to throw money at my distro of choice with the clear
| indication that it will be dispersed to upstream developers of
| important software. Also give me an easy way to explicitly
| allocate my funds to specific packages if I am so inclined. Make
| it all transparent on a web site where the money goes on a high
| level, how much is coming in, and which projects are getting what
| %age of that, what % is administration overhead, etc.
| chronogram wrote:
| I've donated to GNOME before, but like this new website says,
| that goes to GIMP as a way to spend on community needs like
| hardware and conferences. I'll have to set up Patreon, because
| directly contributing to Oyvind Kolas's actual ability to live
| and contribute sounds like a much better goal.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Definitely fund these guys. I really hope they can get to the
| point where they are paid as well as those of us that work in
| commercial software development.
| wrnr wrote:
| On the same site the news of a no-code startup raising a 100M and
| OSS begging for scraps, go figure it out.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-28 19:02 UTC)