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gimp is kinda jank yeah but when people have Serious Takes about how it needs to improve all i can read is "here is how these four guys working intermittently for free have FAILED to live up to the international company making twenty billion dollars a year"

"personally i would just make it be good" great, stop fucking posting about it and get to work then

this is frustrating in a way that's hard to fit in a bleat but it boils down to people not appreciating the outright miracle that open source software is in the first place and then wanting to be treated like a customer when it's not an exact replica of something that costs $700

the thing krita and blender have in common is that PEOPLE GAVE THEM A LOT OF MONEY

It would be cool if we could do the free open source software thing without both sides having some sort of pretentious anger associated with it. I definitely understand that a lot of these developers and Linux enthusiasts are tired of people asking for help or complaining.

However, I would argue that putting some effort into making the software easier for people to use goes a long way in solving that problem. If multiple people are having a similar issue with my software, that's a signal to me that I need to do something better.

Consumers are always going to be dumb and silly, so the best you can do is partially tame that by implementing at least some measure to solve their problem or to at least defer the problem somewhere else.

ok i think there are a couple particular factors here ① sometimes people treat FOSS as though the thing it's /supposed to be/ is "software i already use, but free, and without any of the stuff i dislike". but that rarely happens — it's creative work made by different people with different ideas

② "why not just copy photoshop" is really the same genre of Idea Guy post as "why not just make a pokémon game with every region in it", but software isn't often recognized as a creative endeavor so a lot of serious professionals nod along (and then i look like a lunatic for finding it grating)

③ when google is free and photoshop is """free""" (on the pirate bay) and programming is basically regarded as some sort of wizard activity anyway, it's very easy to go "well why isn't this free thing as powerful as this other free thing"

I mean, if they dont have the resources to hire a UX designer and to run studies, then it would make sense to use the design off of some other company that does right? I mean, its basically getting UX design and studies for free.

I think it also is another thing: some people actually LIKE the 'bad' UX, so it puts them in a weird position: if they did honestly redo everything, it'd make it lose the identity that a group wanted.

Another thing people ALWAYS gloss over is that Photoshop has bad UX as well. More people are just familiar with it. I learned on GIMP and got used to it, and liked it. I decided to "get serious" and tried learning Photoshop and it was MISERABLE, the workflow was backwards and everything was hidden

yes the few times i've been exposed to photoshop i haven't been able to find a goddamn thing. people do regularly confuse "thing i've been using for twenty years" with "good UX"

I learned the GIMP in like 1999 (RTFM & experiment), with no prior pro image software experience. When I've attempted to touch pro software, I've been extremely lost & found it unintuitive. Familiarity provides a huge bias about what feels natural & sensible. I think people can forget that

Also, if you pick up a tool expecting to accomplish a certain goal, without knowing how to use that tool to reach that goal, discovering the process will feel difficult bc of learning detours. Picking up a tool just to experiment & learn how it works, then using the tool for a goal, is much easier

OTOH sometimes it’s kind of both. Was one of the core developers of a FOSS project that got investment and hired actual UX professionals to tackle areas users has persistently complained about. There was a shocking amount of pushback, even anger and outrage, by devs who insisted it was a waste…

… and that the effort was “just time wasted by pixel pushers who can’t write their own patches,” etc. Things have improved over the (decade+!) since then but the UX team was p badly burnt by it, and it taught me a lot about the fact that simply resourcing something doesn’t change a community.

that sucks. can't imagine what the hell was going on for a project to hire UX people and then be like, surprised, when they have UX suggestions

The dynamic you mention (tool made by/for devs also has a crowd of non-decs wishing it were easier for them) is real, but also when FOSS projects and advocates get Big Ideas about project evangelism and decide a project should be used by everybody… some of them morph into “ux is just fluff”

My issues with GIMP are less about the UX and more about how the parts never fit together quite right and how some of the tools’ quality is lacking (in terms of how it handles blending etc.) and when I’ve made suggestions for improvement the immediate response is “you have the source, you fix it”

and like sure it’s valid that they’re overworked and their priorities are elsewhere but it’s always been an attitude that shuts down my willingness to collaborate and actually work on the code because having the source is different than being able to work on an existing complex codebase

I do respect a lot of what GIMP has done for F/OSS in general and GTK in particular, but to me GIMP is very much, to use a hamfisted analogy that will probably annoy you very much, the PHP of art software.