[CREATE] Pitching a community-funded conference

[Daniel James]

Hi Dave,

> Robin has spent the past few years bad-mouthing the GIMP at every
> opportunity to film guys (presumably, to create a more favourable
> impression of CinePaint)

I don't believe that to be true. I've met Robin in person twice, and 
interviewed him for this month's Linux Format magazine (issue 104). 
Robin actually said in the interview that people always ask him why the 
CinePaint team are mad at the Gimp team, and why they left, but that the 
truth is that they were never members of the Gimp project.

They picked up an abandoned fork, and only released their own tarballs 
because no-one ever gave them access to Gimp CVS. I believe the name 
change came about because people in California are sensitive to 
disability issues, and they find the name 'gimp' to be seriously 
offensive. It's not even remotely funny to them.

As for creating a more favourable impression, CinePaint serves a 
different kind of user. You can't advocate using an 8-bit/channel paint 
app to a user who requires high dynamic range. On the other hand, 
CinePaint has suffered from having a smaller user base than Gimp, and 
still isn't very well known among general GNU/Linux users.

While there may be cultural and political differences between the Gimp 
and CinePaint teams, I believe this particular rift is long overdue for 
resolution. I think the free software desktop needs both apps.

Cheers!

Daniel