It's just sad. Nobody wants to fork it because nobody uses GIMP, so forks get almost no traction. People love the effort and commitment, install it, try it for a couple of tasks, fail, and never come back. It has built up this reputation of being terrible, and no one wants to give it a second chance after their first impression.

I think it's a lesson in how not to run an open-source project. I put it in the same category as Darktable, which gives off that exact same bad first impression.