On Sunday 06 June 2010 12:39:23 shreekant bohra wrote:
Will you trim the junk in your replies. And post a brief summary with your links?
Sorry for any inconvenience. Will take care in future. The link is about an email to gimp community from Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical where he talks about funding to GIMP and Cinepaint. Its dated in 2004 but I found it highly relevant to the topic we are discussing.
Gimp imo is far superior to any of the commercial packages. But due to patent issues (afaik - i have never bothered to investigate, and if someone has, please post, it will be most useful to those fighting the standard wars), cant read the closed binary formats of the closed packages. There was one crucial area where FLOSS DTP required a very messy workaround - CYMK. Afaik that was sorted out 2 years ago.
Again imo, the CYMK issue could be sorted out with suitable instruments. I had done a CYMK exercise in 87 for a guy who used it for calibrating automated film processing. Afair this calibration was part of the maintanence of such machines anyway. So It isnt merely a software issue and involves substantial tech skill, which is conveinently brushed under the carpet.
In every case of a floss software having a "shortcoming", closer investigation will reveal a more subtle and involved problem. Solving the problem is a biz opportunity. I am sure that some smart group would be providing a solution and making a tidy sum.
However in these parts we want to sit on our asses and wait for someone else to do the grunt work.
Reminds me of the "linux is not ready for cyber cafe thread" and one other similiar thread on this list - i cant recollect the exact topic.