Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Liam R E Quin]

On Sun, 2012-03-11 at 19:52 +0100, grafxuser wrote:


> Needed:
> - motivated and good developers with the skills, level of knowledge of 
> GIMP's source code, and the time to work on the project. Which else 
> skills over C (and Python or Scheme) knowledge do they  need?

Some idea about the product vision, and about image processing. One
approach there might be to pay existing gimp people (Peter, Mitch,
Margin, Alexia, Øyvind, Sir Nigel Gresley) to do (between them) a week
of intensive immersion to a group of fresh-faced raw recruits :-)

Liam

-- 
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Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
The barefoot typographer
Ankh on irc.gnome.org freenode#xml irc.sorcery.net#gaycafe

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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[grafxuser]

Hi

here are some thoughts from me to the topic and postings before:

1. Solve the real problems:
Full acknowledgement with Alexia and Alexandre to first solve the real 
problems that caused the delay. I like the proposal for the further Git 
branching and the proposal to iteratively check-in in small steps 
instead of big features. In my opinion you're on the right way. Before 
every new feature version a decision should be made, whether the feature 
will be part of the next GIMP's version at all, only with its working 
parts or in complete. If it's decided to include the feature in the new 
version, only the tested and working parts should be accessible from the 
UI. This will save GIMP from complaints about missing or buggy 
functionality and let developers force their development. Users and 
people involved here will be more pleased.


2. Yes to employed persons, further support possibilities:
IMHO it's good for the product GIMP to have at least one employed 
person. If we want a high end  product, as I can read at 
http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision, this 
would be simply necessary. This can be a programmer, project manager, 
product manager, coordinator etc. The people involved here for a long 
time might know best what is missing.

For the payment I see various possibilities:
-	donations (which already exists). I think Sourceforge provides 
something suitable, too.

-   regular sponsoring by a company
-   a company employing this person/these persons
-   social payment through Pledgie, Flattr etc.
-	a GIMP E-Book like 'Digikam Recipes' which proceeds are used to 
support GIMP production
-	producers of commercial GIMP products, like book authors and 
publishers. Why not invest and return something back after benefiting 
from a free product?
-	an own foundation, which can care for fundraising and organization. 
Look at the Eclipse project – they are very successful with this. 
Eclipse project releases a service pack every four months a new version 
and every year. This foundation could care for GIMP only or you unite 
with other free graphics projects for this. You could discuss this on 
the next LGM.


Perhaps the Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org) or the Software 
Freedom Conservancy (sfconservancy.org) can support us financially or as 
mentors, too?


3. Next steps
Why do we not just start here to list what is specifically necessary, 
what do we already have und what is still needed? Then everybody here 
can look out for concrete solutions.
Here's my proposal, partially summarizing points from the former 
postings in this thread:


Needed:
-	motivated and good developers with the skills, level of knowledge of 
GIMP's source code, and the time to work on the project. Which else 
skills over C (and Python or Scheme) knowledge do they  need?

-   somebody with the big picture of GIMP's architecture
-   a project manager with influence, but not bossing people around
-   somebody who can care for the 'paper stuff' for the employees
-   overview of easy to solve tasks
-   funding to pay all employees, but not only developers
-   an attractive project organisation, which entices contributors
-   … (add your thoughts here)


What we already have:
-   experienced developers, doing their job for free and in spare time
-   developers willing to contribute permanently
-   people (able and) willing to spend money
-   UI experts
-   former GSoC students and hopefully new students on the next GSoC
-   artists and their artwork
-   experienced users here and in various forums
-   a stable GIMP 2.6 and lots of useful plugins
-   people reporting bugs
-   users of the official GIMP and curious users for new features
-   ideas, ideas, ideas
-   … (add your findings here)


So, now it's on you to make more out of this list.

grafxuser
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Stefan Peter]

On 03/09/2012 09:01 PM, Kevin Cozens wrote:
> Someone wrote:
>> So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
>> at least make a significant step towards catching up?
> 
> No amount of money will help if there is no one available with the
> skills, level of knowledge of GIMP's source code, and the time to work
> on the project.

Money can buy you time: Depending on where you live, a fulltime paid
developer could invest 35 to 45 hours a week into the project without
having to fear that there is no money at the end of the month to pay the
rent. Compared to a developer being able to invest some of his/her spare
time only, this can be a noticeable difference on productivity per month.

Choosing a skilled and knowledgeable developer and
guide/motivate/control him/her to the benefit of the project goals at
hand is another challenge altogether. This process sometimes is referred
to as "herding cats".

Just saying ,,,

Regards

Stefan Peter


-- 
"In summary, I think you are trying to solve a problem that may not
need to be solved, using a tool that is not meant to solve it, without
understanding what is causing your problems and without knowing how
the tool actually works in the first place :)"
Jeffrey J. Kosowsky on the backuppc mailing list
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 12:25 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

>> No amount of money will help if there is no one available with the skills,
>> level of knowledge of GIMP's source code, and the time to work on the
>> project. I think the people with enough knowledge of GIMP's internals and
>> the who have the time to work on the project are already doing so.
>
> I know at least one important contributor who expressed an interest in
> doing paid development.

After rereading my inbox: two important contributors.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 12:01 AM, Kevin Cozens wrote:
> Someone wrote:
>>
>> So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
>> at least make a significant step towards catching up?
>
>
> No amount of money will help if there is no one available with the skills,
> level of knowledge of GIMP's source code, and the time to work on the
> project. I think the people with enough knowledge of GIMP's internals and
> the who have the time to work on the project are already doing so.

I know at least one important contributor who expressed an interest in
doing paid development.

Starting paid development means changing a lot in how the project
works. I understand that the way things are going now seem easier to
everyone, because right now noone really takes a formal/written
responsibility for anything and would rather be happy to see this
state of affairs to continue.

Yes, part of the 2.8 issue is because we tried to do to many things at
once. But I don't really think that branch-based development is going
to cure everything.

We practically lost Enselic who was supposed to do all the
heavy-lifting in the final migration to GEGL and implement some of the
much desired hi-end features. What's been happening for last several
years is a loss of credibility for the project. We can only cure that
with that final switch. And only temporarily. Right now it looks like
it's still bloody years away.

If we can't organise the project in a way that developers come
themselves, then saying a strict "no" to paid development while
allowing GSoC (which _is_ paid development) seems silly to me.

That said, we haven't really done everything to attract new
developers, and I suggest that we start with tying loose ends:

- better intro docs
- more hackfests

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Kevin Cozens]

Someone wrote:

So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
at least make a significant step towards catching up?


No amount of money will help if there is no one available with the skills, 
level of knowledge of GIMP's source code, and the time to work on the 
project. I think the people with enough knowledge of GIMP's internals and 
the who have the time to work on the project are already doing so.


--
Cheers!

Kevin.

http://www.ve3syb.ca/   |"Nerds make the shiny things that distract
Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172  | the mouth-breathers, and that's why we're
| powerful!"
#include  | --Chris Hardwick
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[gespert...@gmail.com]

2012/3/5 Chris Mohler 

>
> Early binding.  Exporting to CMYK (for publishers who only accept CMYK
> files).  Rich black vs 100% K.  "Hard" soft proof (for clients who
> wish to print 0,0,255 and need to be shown the inevitable color
> shift).  Overprinting.  I'm sure I could dig up a couple more ;)
>

That could be addressed with an intermediate binding workflow, and the idea
(already proposed) of creating special projections for other color spaces
like CMYK would be compatible with that.
Rich black, pure black, overprinting is more about using CMYK channels as
spot channels rather than creating color managed separations.
Some time ago I proposed some rather simple changes for the Separate+
plugin to make that possible (it's already possible to create pure blacks,
overprints, even rich blacks and pure CMYK primaries with Separate+ but in
a manual, tedious and error prone way using the pseudo-channels).
So, back to the topic: some money sponsoring those changes in the plugin
would give users a tool that would make it possible to create CMYK files
with intermediate binding covering all those common needs (overprint, rich
black, using CMYK primaries as spot channels, pure black/grays, etc.)
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexia Death]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 10:05 PM, Jeremy Morton  wrote:
> With all due respect, your method of not paying anyone has resulted in 2
> years without a stable release of GIMP.  What's your point?  It's not like
> things are just rosy and there aint nothing to fix.

Failure to release in 2 years is not a problem curable with money.
Long development cycle is the result of merging more than a few large
features early on that took time to mature and stabilize. It's a
result of going for "perfect completeness in one go", instead of
taking small simple and above all, releasable steps. We will try to
address this shortcoming in the next few cycles by trying to keep the
main tree in a "releasable" state at all times and add new stuff in
small self-contained functional but perhaps feature incomplete chunks.
I know Peter disagrees with me and many others on this, because he
wants to see his babies "complete", but that's exactly the thinking
that got us this long cycle and exactly the thing we need to avoid.
Adding more developers, specially paid ones without addressing the
causes is not going to improve matters much unfortunately. there will
be more things waiting around for those few touches to become
releasable pushing the deadline ahead.

-- 
--Alexia
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Jeremy Morton]

With all due respect, your method of not paying anyone has resulted in 2 
years without a stable release of GIMP.  What's your point?  It's not 
like things are just rosy and there aint nothing to fix.


--
Best regards,
Jeremy Morton (Jez)

On 05/03/2012 11:56, peter sikking wrote:

Paul Slocum wrote:


I've been a serious professional GIMP user for about 10 years, but the
project has seem stalled for quite some time now.  I was wondering how
much money it would take to get the project back on track?  Would 25k,
50k, 100k to hire one or two programmers for several months make a
substantial difference?



can I point out a couple of things?

first, it has been pointed out for years that that would
build a two-class society in GIMP: paid and very active
(and contribution is power in free software), vs. unpaid and
occasional contributor (or more tragic, unpaid and steady
contributor; how long would that last?)

next, software engineering is only one single piece of the whole
puzzle of shipping software. I have a lot of respect for the people
who write the documentation; for the people who do triage in
bugzilla; for those who run the SoC; for those who organise
and do localisation; I probably forget some more who do similar
hard, nagging work that involves quite a bit of managing
processes. all of this is not seen as development,
which is already a put-down for these people. add another one
on top; that it would not speak for itself to pay to get
this done?

then there is my team, the UI team. and related, the people
undertaking quite a bit of usability research at this moment.
As a professional, I know what all that is worth, both in
what it delivers to the project and what it costs in
the real world: a substantial amount. all of this is
contributed at the moment with the understanding that
there is no money going around in GIMP (donations are
used for travel to bring contributors together and for
servers and hosting).

I would not like to see that understanding being broken.

the reason our (m+mi works) contribution of years to
openPrinting came to an end, was that I realised
that everyone was paid to contribute to open source
printing (_no_one_ work voluntarily in printing) except
for us, the interaction design team, who were dragging
printing out of the 1980s (kicking and screaming).
meanwhile there was a lot of pressure on us from these paid
folks to make progress, but not a dollar to make it happen.
then something snapped.

I won't get fooled again. if there is money for the engineering
of a project, then there better be real ($) appreciation of
what interaction design is worth.

my conclusion is to let pandora's box of paid development
closed.

 --ps

 founder + principal interaction architect
 man + machine interface works

 http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture



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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Chris Mohler]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
 wrote:
>> Personally, what I really need is CMYK
>
> Everyone wants CMYK, few mention what they need specifically :)

Early binding.  Exporting to CMYK (for publishers who only accept CMYK
files).  Rich black vs 100% K.  "Hard" soft proof (for clients who
wish to print 0,0,255 and need to be shown the inevitable color
shift).  Overprinting.  I'm sure I could dig up a couple more ;)

On topic:
I'm all for paying developers and/or hiring the right extra people.
As others have pointed out, several FOSS projects have successfully
integrated paid development.   If I really knew C, I'd go part or full
time in a heartbeat.

But I just lurk here - don't mind me ;)

Chris
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Nadav Vinik]

Need easy tasks page

Libreoffice success not only because the paid developers but also
because they create a wiki page which contains a lot of easy tasks in
categories from beginners to advances so they encourage a lot of
people to do small tasks which together become big advance for the
libreoffice.

It much easier to commitment for a one task rather than consistently
in a big project. I'm also contribute code to some projects like
libreoffice and KDE just because the small tasks, and there are a many
other programmers who can write code from time to time but don't want
to commitment regularly and some of them may become commitment when
they feel better with the code and so on.

I follow the commits of gimp and other projects and most of the
commits are not implementing special algorithms and so on. tasks like
converting units from one API to another, like porting to GTK 3 are
good to be in those easy tasks.

and the most important issue is that the main developers can focus in
the major gimp development like writing new features and so on

On 5 March 2012 19:40, peter sikking  wrote:
> Alexandre wrote:
>
>>> Personally, what I really need is CMYK
>>
>> Everyone wants CMYK, few mention what they need specifically :)
>
> yeah, beware of the schmuck:
>
> 
>
>    --ps
>
>        founder + principal interaction architect
>            man + machine interface works
>
>        http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture
>
>
>
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-- 
הבלוג שלי:
http://nadavvin.com
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[peter sikking]

Alexandre wrote:

>> Personally, what I really need is CMYK
> 
> Everyone wants CMYK, few mention what they need specifically :)

yeah, beware of the schmuck:



--ps

founder + principal interaction architect
man + machine interface works

http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture



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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Paul Slocum wrote:

> Personally, what I really need is CMYK

Everyone wants CMYK, few mention what they need specifically :)

>  and layer folders.

Already done.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Paul Slocum]

I'm an embedded systems programmer and user interface designer with 15
years professional experience.  I was previously doing VxWorks
programming and am now starting up an iOS app company (all my iOS
design work is done in GIMP).  I live in New York, and I also have
some experience in advertising and public relations.

I've been pondering this idea for a while of trying to figure out a
way to inject some money into GIMP.  I just emailed because I wanted
to get an idea of what kind of money would be required and whether the
developers would be open to such an idea -- I don't have that kind of
money now, but I'm pretty confident that I could raise it if I put my
mind to it.  I would probably apply for a grant that would pay for me
to work on the project for a year, managing and contributing where I
can, and raising the money to hire one or two GIMP programmers to work
on the project full time.

What I would want to get out of it is a solid release of 2.8 for
Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Personally, what I really need is CMYK and
layer folders.  I don't really have any agenda other than that, and
the voice that a part-time manager would typically have in a project
like this.  I think 2.8 already addresses all my major feature needs
and user interface complaints, so I just want to get it out.

It would probably be 2013 before I could realistically make anything
happen with this, but this is good information that you guys are
providing, and I'll be thinking about it.  I'm glad that you think the
programmers would be open to getting paid. :)  Where are most of the
programmers for GIMP located?  Is there some place I could find out
more information about the programmers and people who work on GIMP?

-paul

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:00 AM, Mukund Sivaraman  wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 08:41:08AM +0200, Alexia Death wrote:
>> > So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
>> > at least make a significant step towards catching up?
>> Whatever it takes to get one or two of our lead developers to work on
>> GIMP full time. Just hiring 2 blokes off the street will not do.
>> Michael Natterer has done some paid for work for GTK through his
>> company I believe,  but as far as I know he is not interested in
>> turning a hobby into a job... Because jobs come with a boss who can
>> boss you around and that is no fun.  Same may be true for others.
>>
>> Having a paid developer on the team has been discussed before. there
>> is no actual opposition to the idea, but nobody has stepped up to
>> handle the paperwork and manager duties:P
>
> The paperwork and manager duties are straightforward.
>
> I'd like to first see a serious proposal first on what an investor
> wants out of it, and what money they're willing to put in.  Talking
> briefly about investing is one thing, but making schedules and
> projections for them takes time.  If there is a serious interest, we
> can talk about it. Tell us about your background.
>
> Some developers will indeed be interested in working on GIMP and GEGL
> full-time, and IMO, it'll be good for GIMP and GEGL's development
> generally.  Other free software projects are prospering due to
> commercial development.
>
>                Mukund
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:56 PM, peter sikking  wrote:
> Paul Slocum wrote:
>
>> I've been a serious professional GIMP user for about 10 years, but the
>> project has seem stalled for quite some time now.  I was wondering how
>> much money it would take to get the project back on track?  Would 25k,
>> 50k, 100k to hire one or two programmers for several months make a
>> substantial difference?
>
>
> can I point out a couple of things?
>
> first, it has been pointed out for years that that would
> build a two-class society in GIMP: paid and very active
> (and contribution is power in free software), vs. unpaid and
> occasional contributor (or more tragic, unpaid and steady
> contributor; how long would that last?)

Blender Foundation has been able to deal with that for years and it's
by far the most active free graphics project.

Whether we are able to organize things same efficiently is a whole
different topic :)

> next, software engineering is only one single piece of the whole
> puzzle of shipping software. I have a lot of respect for the people
> who write the documentation; for the people who do triage in
> bugzilla; for those who run the SoC; for those who organise
> and do localisation; I probably forget some more who do similar
> hard, nagging work that involves quite a bit of managing
> processes. all of this is not seen as development,
> which is already a put-down for these people. add another one
> on top; that it would not speak for itself to pay to get
> this done?

Well, I do some of what you mentioned and I have absolutely no
problems with somebody else getting paid to develop GIMP.

> then there is my team, the UI team. and related, the people
> undertaking quite a bit of usability research at this moment.
> As a professional, I know what all that is worth, both in
> what it delivers to the project and what it costs in
> the real world: a substantial amount. all of this is
> contributed at the moment with the understanding that
> there is no money going around in GIMP (donations are
> used for travel to bring contributors together and for
> servers and hosting).
>
> I would not like to see that understanding being broken.

I'm not sure what you mean with money going around. If a hired
programmer interacted with your team, would that be a bad thing for
the understanding?

> the reason our (m+mi works) contribution of years to
> openPrinting came to an end, was that I realised
> that everyone was paid to contribute to open source
> printing (_no_one_ work voluntarily in printing) except
> for us, the interaction design team, who were dragging
> printing out of the 1980s (kicking and screaming).
> meanwhile there was a lot of pressure on us from these paid
> folks to make progress, but not a dollar to make it happen.
> then something snapped.

My impression was that it was because nobody actually used your spec :)

> I won't get fooled again. if there is money for the engineering
> of a project, then there better be real ($) appreciation of
> what interaction design is worth.

I can't see why both UX team and a programmer couldn't be paid.

> my conclusion is to let pandora's box of paid development
> closed.

OK, here is my take.

It's been a 1+ year since I deliberately raised public awereness of
lack of developers in the team. It got quite a coverage in the online
press, including Phoronix. We've been mentioning lack of developers in
the public all the time ever since then.

What's the outcome?

We haven't experienced any substantial raise of active developers.
We haven't released 2.8 yet, after 3+ years of having it in works.
We wouldn't get a lot of the new features in 2.8/2.10 without GSoC.

BTW, GSoC  _already_ is paid development_and_ you already worked with
at least one of the students :)

So, would you say that the project manages itself just fine? Because
the way things are going we are not going to deliver. We've been
failing expectations for years. This has got to stop.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[peter sikking]

Paul Slocum wrote:

> I've been a serious professional GIMP user for about 10 years, but the
> project has seem stalled for quite some time now.  I was wondering how
> much money it would take to get the project back on track?  Would 25k,
> 50k, 100k to hire one or two programmers for several months make a
> substantial difference?


can I point out a couple of things?

first, it has been pointed out for years that that would
build a two-class society in GIMP: paid and very active
(and contribution is power in free software), vs. unpaid and
occasional contributor (or more tragic, unpaid and steady
contributor; how long would that last?)

next, software engineering is only one single piece of the whole
puzzle of shipping software. I have a lot of respect for the people
who write the documentation; for the people who do triage in
bugzilla; for those who run the SoC; for those who organise
and do localisation; I probably forget some more who do similar
hard, nagging work that involves quite a bit of managing
processes. all of this is not seen as development,
which is already a put-down for these people. add another one
on top; that it would not speak for itself to pay to get
this done?

then there is my team, the UI team. and related, the people
undertaking quite a bit of usability research at this moment.
As a professional, I know what all that is worth, both in
what it delivers to the project and what it costs in
the real world: a substantial amount. all of this is
contributed at the moment with the understanding that
there is no money going around in GIMP (donations are
used for travel to bring contributors together and for
servers and hosting).

I would not like to see that understanding being broken.

the reason our (m+mi works) contribution of years to
openPrinting came to an end, was that I realised
that everyone was paid to contribute to open source
printing (_no_one_ work voluntarily in printing) except
for us, the interaction design team, who were dragging
printing out of the 1980s (kicking and screaming).
meanwhile there was a lot of pressure on us from these paid
folks to make progress, but not a dollar to make it happen.
then something snapped.

I won't get fooled again. if there is money for the engineering
of a project, then there better be real ($) appreciation of
what interaction design is worth.

my conclusion is to let pandora's box of paid development
closed. 

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect
man + machine interface works

http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture



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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexia Death]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
 wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Alexia Death wrote:
>
>> Having a paid developer on the team has been discussed before. there
>> is no actual opposition to the idea, but nobody has stepped up to
>> handle the paperwork and manager duties:P
>
> I told you: SFC can do that :)

Only if someone of infuluence from our side is willing to set it up.
Currently that person would need to be mitch...


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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Alexia Death wrote:

> Having a paid developer on the team has been discussed before. there
> is no actual opposition to the idea, but nobody has stepped up to
> handle the paperwork and manager duties:P

I told you: SFC can do that :)

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Mukund Sivaraman]

Hi

On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 08:41:08AM +0200, Alexia Death wrote:
> > So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
> > at least make a significant step towards catching up?
> Whatever it takes to get one or two of our lead developers to work on
> GIMP full time. Just hiring 2 blokes off the street will not do.
> Michael Natterer has done some paid for work for GTK through his
> company I believe,  but as far as I know he is not interested in
> turning a hobby into a job... Because jobs come with a boss who can
> boss you around and that is no fun.  Same may be true for others.
> 
> Having a paid developer on the team has been discussed before. there
> is no actual opposition to the idea, but nobody has stepped up to
> handle the paperwork and manager duties:P

The paperwork and manager duties are straightforward.

I'd like to first see a serious proposal first on what an investor
wants out of it, and what money they're willing to put in.  Talking
briefly about investing is one thing, but making schedules and
projections for them takes time.  If there is a serious interest, we
can talk about it. Tell us about your background.

Some developers will indeed be interested in working on GIMP and GEGL
full-time, and IMO, it'll be good for GIMP and GEGL's development
generally.  Other free software projects are prospering due to
commercial development.

Mukund
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Alexia Death]

> So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
> at least make a significant step towards catching up?
Whatever it takes to get one or two of our lead developers to work on
GIMP full time. Just hiring 2 blokes off the street will not do.
Michael Natterer has done some paid for work for GTK through his
company I believe,  but as far as I know he is not interested in
turning a hobby into a job... Because jobs come with a boss who can
boss you around and that is no fun.  Same may be true for others.

Having a paid developer on the team has been discussed before. there
is no actual opposition to the idea, but nobody has stepped up to
handle the paperwork and manager duties:P

-- 
--Alexia
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Paul Slocum]

> But your point is true ..there are a lack of qualified manpower to
> speed-up the development and a daily growing list of requests from the
> userland.

So what kind of money do you think would it take to catch up?  Or to
at least make a significant step towards catching up?

-paul
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Re: [Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[SorinN]

For sure the project is not stalled - you can watch the progress on
http://www.gimpusers.com/ or you can read articles like this one
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/basic-gpu-side-rendering-and-processing-in-gimp-available
  on libre graphics world website.

But your point is true ..there are a lack of qualified manpower to
speed-up the development and a daily growing list of requests from the
userland.


2012/3/4 Paul Slocum :
> I've been a serious professional GIMP user for about 10 years, but the
> project has seem stalled for quite some time now.  I was wondering how
> much money it would take to get the project back on track?  Would 25k,
> 50k, 100k to hire one or two programmers for several months make a
> substantial difference?
>
> -paul
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-- 
Nemes Ioan Sorin
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[Gimp-developer] How much money to make a dent in GIMP 2.8?

[Paul Slocum]

I've been a serious professional GIMP user for about 10 years, but the
project has seem stalled for quite some time now.  I was wondering how
much money it would take to get the project back on track?  Would 25k,
50k, 100k to hire one or two programmers for several months make a
substantial difference?

-paul
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