the daily snivel

An interesting story on the maddening ordeal of trying to install the "GIMP" image manipulation program (an open source application with features to more or less rival Adobe Photoshop) in Windows XP, with some not unreasonable crabbing about why sometimes it's at least as sensible to pay for software that works as it is to spend a lot of time trying to monkey with free software that doesn't. That said, a good friend of mine is a big fan of the GIMP, and she recently endorsed "Gimpshop" (a release modeled to resemble the menu commands of Photoshop for users familiar with that program) as a much more pleasing implementation, and certainly it's a hardy, capable program that can get a lot done at the end of the day and, hey, it's free.

Me, I have a, er, uh, perfectly legitimate installation of Photoshop on my iBook at home (and in any case GIMP is far better suited to its native Linux environment, or with X11 on a Mac), but I installed Gimpshop on my Windows XP computer at work for those times I need to edit an image for our website or a brochure and I've found it quite handy, as much as there are still times I want to wield my hammer of +1 usability and bash a less confusing interface into it. On the othe hand, we can all be thankful that at least it wasn't designed by those monsters of modern design, Microsoft. The menus in Gimpshop are still a little unnatural as it is; I'd hate to imagine how much worse it would be if they were those dreadful "expanding" menus you get by default in Word.

None of which is to say that I do not abound with love and respect for those who give their hours to open source software. Or that the author of the above-linked article doesn't. Like pro bono legal work (in a much, much, much, much less meaningful way than pro bono legal work, of course), giving your time to a project you are fascinated with for the public benefit is an ideal to aspire to. But I don't think anyone is kidding themselves in thinking that GIMP or OpenOffice.org can simply be the substitute for Photoshop or Microsoft Office for all people at all times. Or that Linux (snerk) will ever fully replace Microsoft Windows or (bias alert) the Mac OS. Ease of use, predictable, ever-expanding features, and a good, clean, intuitive interface are all features that should be part and parcel with the very creation of the software, but rarely are, and even though the big companies often get things wrong too, people are still largely willing to pay for the privilege of not having to indicate both the amount and the units of measurement of space to allocate to the "tile cache" on installation.