Re: [Gimp-user] Official binaries for Windows and MacOS X

[Ken Springer <snowshed1 q com>]

On 11/10/11 2:00 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:33 AM, Mikael Ståldal wrote:
> > On the official GIMP homepage, you can read:
> >
> > "The GIMP team doesn't provide official Mac binaries."
> >
> > and
> >
> > "The GIMP team doesn't officially provide any Windows binaries."
> >
> > I think that the GIMP team should provide official binaries for Windows and
> > MacOS X.
>
> Hi Mikael,
>
> I'm afraid you are missing an essential bit of information. Let me provide it :)

Hi, Alexandre,

> Official support means that the team takes responsibility for how well
> GIMP works on those platforms and thus can be blamed for anything that
> is wrong there. Which means that someone in the core team should use
> this platform as a primary one and be ready to fix things for it.

Unfortunately for the Gimp developers, the average user will assign some 
responsibility to the Gimp project for the software not running.  That's 
due to the fact the average user would have no way to know where the 
responsibility for the problem lies, with Gimp, the third party, or both.

> As far as I can tell the we don't have core team developers actively
> working on Windows (although some fixes do get applied to fix bugs on
> Windows). TBH, not so long ago the team was even discussing
> possibility to call Windows platform unsupported until the switch to
> GTK 3 due to a number of horrible bugs in advanced input devices
> support in GTK+ 2 which noone's going to fix. I'm not speaking on
> behalf of the rest of the team, but I can't see the point of providing
> a half-working solution for painters and calling it an official
> Windows build. Sorry.
>
> There _are_ some changes coming to Quartz port of GTK+ lately to make
> GIMP look and behave more natively on Mac, but I'm not sure that at
> this point we can call this platform officially supported (especially
> since we don't package DMGs).
>
> > This doesn't need to involve much work, perhaps you can get away with just
> > change the text on the homepage and declare the Windows and MacOS X packages
> > you already link to as official.
>
> I don't think we can get away with just that. We really do not provide
> binaries. It's a (much appreciated) 3rd party effort. OTOH, I do see
> your point, and hopefully at some point we'll get there.
>
> Alexandre Prokoudine
> http://libregraphicsworld.org
> _______________________________________________
> gimp-user-list mailing list
> gimp-user-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

--
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Ken Springer

"All progress depends upon the unreasonable person."
George Bernard Shaw

"Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for
cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country!"
President William McKinley

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