Being able to open a PR and getting accepted to be merged are 2 totally different things.
IMO, one of the core reasons why UI/UX in open source applications (that aren't backed or actively contributed by dedicated staff in big companies that keeps them on a salary for the sole purpose of contributing) is because it's more widely accepted for programmers to contribute to open source than UI/UX designers.
In this case the best one can do is design mockups, but then who implements it? Who even has to be convinced that the mockup is a step forward or backwards, the moment every design decision is treated as having the same value as the next one, on the grounds of "it's just an opinion"?
My point is, we don't lack programmers/developers we lack UI/UX people willing to contribute, and we also lack the former to actually listen to what they have these people to say instead of dismissing their suggestions as "not data driven enough", "too opinionated" etc.
There’s a certain section of open source devs who fight tooth-and-nail against better UX as they see any attempt at making a software easier to use as ‘dumbing things down’.
It’s why as a UX designer I don’t contribute to open source projects any more as the fight just isn’t worth it.
GIMP is peak that attitude. It could be a top-quality mainstream open source image editor if they wanted it to, but they don’t.
Photopea is the work of one guy, Affinity Photo was made by a small team, so it’s clear it’s not manpower but attitude.
They’ve got things just how they like it and the last thing they want is to make things easier and have a bunch of n00bs running around and spoiling things, thank you very much.
> There’s a certain section of open source devs who fight tooth-and-nail against better UX... GIMP is peak that attitude.
Except the GIMP team worked with a UX architect for several years. That's how you got single-window mode, convenient rectangular/ellipse selection and cropping tool, polygonal selection tool built into lasso, the unified transform tool, and more.
And even after Peter (the UX guy) departed, the team still made a bunch of UX improvements (and continues making them, time-permitting).
> Affinity Photo was made by a small team, so it’s clear it’s not manpower but attitude.
Serif Ltd. is 200 to 500 employees. They have paid developers working full time. They had the funds to start from scratch and build on their previous experience creating similar applications.
Well, your argument inspires some thought... if one guy made Photopea, why don't a couple of FLOSS devs just copy it? (as a separate project, not as part of GIMP)
Starting from scratch usually sounds like a great idea. You don't have to deal with legacies and workarounds, what's not to like about that? :) So I get it why people think it's best to start GIMP anew. I also get it why people are reluctant to do so. While you are working on something new, you also typically don't have a working program for years. And when they already have software that works, that means maintaining two code bases at once.
In case of GIMP, the existing team is already stretched thin and has to deal with too many reports and requests to handle. In the past 4 years, the amount of reports in the issue tracker more than doubled, but the team hasn't grown accordingly. I don't think it's realistic to expect that the team would be able to maintain the current code base while starting anew. If the current progress is already commonly referred to as glacial, what do you think will happen if they start reimplementing GIMP from scratch?
And I get it why you are referring to Photopea here. I think Photopea is a formidable effort. But it's been under development for 10 years already. That's quite a long time. And Ivan didn't have another image editor to maintain while working on that project. AFAIK, he originally intended the write a web app to merely open and show a PSD file in the browser. That's a quite different development trajectory.
IMO, one of the core reasons why UI/UX in open source applications (that aren't backed or actively contributed by dedicated staff in big companies that keeps them on a salary for the sole purpose of contributing) is because it's more widely accepted for programmers to contribute to open source than UI/UX designers.
In this case the best one can do is design mockups, but then who implements it? Who even has to be convinced that the mockup is a step forward or backwards, the moment every design decision is treated as having the same value as the next one, on the grounds of "it's just an opinion"?
My point is, we don't lack programmers/developers we lack UI/UX people willing to contribute, and we also lack the former to actually listen to what they have these people to say instead of dismissing their suggestions as "not data driven enough", "too opinionated" etc.