That's cool. I do appreciate the work done for GIMP/Gtk that I use. I use GNOME and other Gtk apps all of the time. And I'm only critical of GIMP because I know it could be so much better and I wish I had time to help/support GIMP and other projects like it.

All of my comments are based on user-type use and not code/API use, though I am a developer.

From my use experience I would say Gtk is usable and nice to have; since so many people can use it to make free/open software. But I would also say it is nowhere near what I would expect from a computer UI. We can do so many amazing things with software and UIs these days, but Gtk just comes across as outdated and user-unfriendly.

I hate to throw Apple into the mix, since I know it brings a lot of baggage and they aren't necessarily perfect or consistent, but their use and integration of elegant UI features is something that I enjoy and can be used as an example/reference.

I feel I'm only critical because I develop software and I believe I can imagine what a computer should be able to do. That Gtk is so useful means that did something right for developers, but I'm not convinced it is up to snuff for users--or maybe what I wish it could be.

My comment about the code wasn't based on seeing GIMP's code at all, because I've never looked at it.

It was about the final product which I use that I am commenting on. It's not difficult to image how horrible the GIMP code looks though based on the final result. Maybe the commercial code is also badly written, but that doesn't affect me in any way apart from my use of the interface.

The quality control is easy to assess without seeing any code at all, since quality of code isn't the important factor, it's quality of the user experience.

Maybe you made your comment because the GIMP code is elegant and beautiful, but then I don't care since the product is horrible. The developers might want to focus more on the user and less on code quality then...

Either way, my opinion of GIMP has nothing to do with it being open source or not.

GIMP was an attempt to rival commercial offerings? I'm sure the GIMP developers wanted to make the best software they could, but when you state it like that it just seems so painful.

From where I sit GIMP is a mess and no where near as nice any many commercial offerings, so it seems they failed pretty badly there. I do like the fact that it exists to some extent and it is free. Though I almost always use an alternative if I can.

Maybe I'm just really anal about code and quality control so I'm being too harsh here...