this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025

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GIMP 3.0 Released (www.gimp.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 200 points 2 months ago (72 children)

Man, after decades, why does GIMP still have a marketing problem?

Just visit https://www.gimp.org/ and compare it to https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html

Just assume both did exactly the same thing and cost the exact same amount (free or otherwise). Which would you choose based on their website?

Why does GIMP (and pretty much all FOSS) have to be so secretive about their product? Why no screenshots? Why not showcase the software on their website?

It's so damn frustrating that every FOSS app appears to be command line software, or assumed that the user knows everything about it already.

Devs, you might have a killer piece of software, but screenshots go a long way to help with gaining interest and adoption.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think it's because marketing is expensive and marketing people know that corporations have money to throw at them, and the moment they lower their prices for a FOSS project, they might not get their old revenue when working for a company that can definitely pay what they ask.

We need some sort of FOSM (Free and Open Source Marketing) that helps FOSS projects based on some sort of queue and whoever has recent changes that needs marketing.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Gimp doesn't have a marketing problem. Its well known its just that not many people like it. It is not a nice program to use. I think gimp3 fixes a lot of the janky ui but I'll have to try it out again

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
The devs making Gimp gain literally nothing from you downloading and using it.
Stop applying capitalist logic to one of the few aspects of life that haven't been monetized yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Other programs like Photoshop lose money though. FOSS devs should just quit as they're their own competition.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.

That's highly debatable.

Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there's no incentive to keep making it.

Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.

Even from a purely practical standpoint, why not be clear and avoid wasting people's time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?

I'm not suggesting that GIMP take out Facebook ads. But my god, would a few screenshots kill the project?

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're welcome to contribute your experties.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I wish I could, but this is a systemic problem, not a problem with one individual project.

Is the mindset that anyone looking for open source, FOSS, or Linux stuff is already tech-savvy enough to know exactly what they are looking for based solely on a text description?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 months ago (15 children)

I think it's more so that the kind of people contributing to these projects are on balance not that interested in doing the marketing work.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Basically, yes.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

I've been seeing quite a few posts about this, pretty funny that it all happened so fast.

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