Re: GIMP CMYK support - was [Fsfe-uk] Mac OS X refund

[Dave Crossland]

On 22/01/2008, Noah Slater <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 01:57:46PM +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > The FSF appears to be more and more about campaigning to raise the
> > profile of software freedom in the general public, and less and less
> > about running the GNU project
>
> I don't think the FSF has ever "run" the GNU project.

Well, kinda; I'm being a elliptic because this is address@hidden I suppose.

It seems to me personally that the FSF in 2008 is more about spreading
the software freedom concept to the public than about supporting the
GNU project financially and leading its technical development, which
is what it was originally founded to do and did for many years. It
doesn't do those things now because the free software and open source
communities, which when combined are massive, is carrying that water
for them now.

But the open source community denies the idea of software freedom as
an ethical imperative and using free software exclusively, and so
championing that idea is now the priority of the FSF.

(There isn't as clear a division between FS and OS as I've just made
out, of course, and as this list is currently proving.)

Ironically, this means, as Jon said, "sponsoring projects to fill the
voids that the "scratch the itch" approach leaves vacant." I'd say
Gnash is a good example of this, because most people don't scratch the
itch to have a free flash player and accept Adobe's - in fact, many
people defend accepting it vigorously, which isn't helped by Ubuntu's
stance on non-free - and the small projects to make a free flash
player never really went anywhere, until the GNU project stepped in to
sponsor development.

The priority projects list on the GNU website is a bit odd, because it
ought to have pointers to all the apps that most users want to be
really amazing. The story of Jokosher's development is relevant to
this.

On 22/01/2008, Jon Grant <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > > Will anyone from FSF, FSFE, Gnome or other lead it though?
> >
> > The FSF appears to be more and more about campaigning to raise the
> > profile of software freedom in the general public, and less and less
> > about running the GNU project, so I can imagine them doing it - more
> > the FSFE which seems aimed at EU politicians and EMCA meetings and
> > such, and the Gnome community seems shy of its software freedom roots.
>
> Did you mean "can't imagine them doing it" ? I don't see anyone
> sponsoring projects to fill the voids that the "scratch the itch"
> approach leaves vacant.

The FSF is the most likely to do it out of FSF, FSFE and GNOME.

The FSF in 2006 (iirc) made a big pledgebank for paying a ransom to
get a proprietary game for GNU+Linux released as free software by
buying the bankrupt copyright holder company.

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ is a good candidate for that
activity in such a campaign, if the developer would name a price. (I
have vague ideas about doing this for
http://www.iginomarini.com/ikern.html myself, some day :-)

> > > I don't see why a decent graphics
> > > application shouldn't be as popular as Firefox.
> >
> > Inkscape is becoming that way, as is Scribus. The cross platform
> > nature of QT4 being GPLv3 throughout is very exciting, because when
> > Scribus and KOffice run natively on Windows and Mac OS X as well as
> > they do on GNU+Linux+KDE, and are all GPLv3, then the "firefox
> > phenomenon" is likely to spread :-)
>
> That sounds good! We may need to abandon GIMP and OpenOffice to move
> things forward.

When GIMP is GEGL based it will be a lot better.

OpenOffice is good for users with big complex Office legacies. KOffice
or GNOME Office are better for novice users who don't need VBA support
and so on, and they are the majority, and who Google Docs is aimed at.

> The other killer app has to be a media application, even a jazzed up
> VLC with "album browser" feature (like in Apple's itunes etc)

www.getmiro.com ?

> > > In the absence of a
> > > decent Free software package loads of people are using Google's now, a
> > > big missed opportunity.
> >
> > What Google graphics tool?
>
> Picasa

Oh yes of course. Thats a "consumer" photo management tool, not a
professional graphics tool like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture.

But yes, we need a professional photo managment tool like those,
probably built with GEGL and Clutter for extra shine :-)

-- 
Regards,
Dave