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Comment by unpopularopp | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to take the bait:

I know a lot of people don't like that but sometimes I feel that FOSS projects are intentionally sabotaging themselves by ignoring industry standard options/conventions and instead they are following open source ideas just to be different. GIMP is the perfect example of that and generally speaking UI/UX is the main symptom.

Blender was able to move forward by not listening to the FOSS crowd but to the industry. And see where are they now compared to GIMP.

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important here to remember that Blender was created within the industry as a commercial tool. When open sourced the leader of the project remained and knew quite well what separated a good creative tool from a bad one. It was always situated in a position where the core users were either hobbyists or professionals.

Gimp was never in such a situation.

Culture is important.

> Culture is important

Which brings us back to why so many people dislike Gimp, and/or see it as a posterchild example of bad FOSS alternatives.

I agree, and Culture IS important. And I think the culture around many Open Source "Alternatives" is harming themselves and the overall FOSS community. From Mastodon via Gimp to Nextcloud.

Even the name is self sabotage.

It's a clever name. What's your beef with it?

It's a term often interpreted as derogatory for a group of people. (Disabled people)

What? How? GIMP is just some latex thing, what does it have to do with disabled people?

you haven't heard about it because it's no longer commonly used (for good reason), but it's there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimp#Other_uses

If it's no longer (commonly) used, then the project has outlasted the name's so-called derogatory status and should be free from concern.

that would ideally be true, but it takes a lifetime for that to happen. (basically until all people who have experienced gimp as an insult are no longer alive)

If I told my parents I'm "using GIMP", I will get some very concerned looks.

So GIMP has a larger user base than Blender, what is your point ?

Market share might be more relevant when we're comparing products with different market sizes.

Blender is something routinely recommend by normies. Gimp is not.

Blender is a very popular, maybe the most popular, for the tasks its used for. Gimp is not.

I don't know what it has to do with anything - GIMP has been around for a while and has been the de facto FOSS alternative for photoshop for so long. That doesn't make that several of its UX and UI decisions are at least questionable nor make that comment you're replying any less true.

Not to mention the fact that if you ever mention in any way that GIMP's UX/UI could be better to anyone of its veteran devs they would turn weirdly ultra defensive and take everything personal.

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