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> your tone policing argument

If you really think that providing substance to argumentation is about tone rather than useful information, then we must be coming from two different planets, and this conversation has no way forward. So I'm sorry, I'll just back out. Seems safer that way. Good luck.

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I think you're missing the point. There are two ways to interpret "GIMP should be more like Photoshop". One is to assume that the person saying it is out to get your goat. The other is to assume that they're making an allusion to the well-trodden field of people saying "Photoshop has better UI in <particular area>, let's do it that way". The fact that you chose the first one is, I think, what the above reply was getting at.

Between 2007 and 2021, I did a lot of technical support for GIMP users. So when I say that I know what people mean when they say things like "Stop inventing stuff and just copy Photoshop" or "Make the same menu items" or anything to the same effect, this isn't a bunch of hot air. I really do know what they mean, because I've had long discussions with people about all those things. A lot of those discussions involved angry people shouting at me at the top of their lungs that everybody needs free Photoshop and nobody needs GIMP, so the team should just copy Photoshop. Very few people were willing to discuss workflows and usability.

But seems like you didn't measure the one thing we're actually debating: Is Photoshop actually just a better UI than GIMP, or do users simply want what they're accustomed to. And you know what? It's an academic distinction, one that people who were actually interested in making something to enhance software freedom wouldn't care about.

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