[Promotion] free desktop contests

[Thilo Pfennig]

Reading this article about GIMP vs. Photoshop (
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2471885182.html Why Photoshop tops
most-wanted Linux app list ) I had to think about the whole matter. I
am doing a little investigation about the whole GIMp vs Photoshop by
myself but finally am stuck because I am not an expert for graphic
design.

What I would like to see were some contests like those that are done
with chess computers or the little football robots. Why not face the
competitors on all aspects. We only need some standards for measuring
how good free desktop applications are.

So some people could sit at computers - maybe one row with a Mac and
Photoshop, the other row with Linux,KDE/GNOME and GIMP. And then there
should be some practical tasks. In the end some kind of jury could
look at the results and quality and say what group/what application
did a better job.

This could also be done with general Windows, Mac, KDE/GNOME interface
or with Inkscape vs. Illustrator and maybe also a combination of tools
for testing interaction.

Why all this? I have the feeling that the whole issues are not very
objective and also not very visible. if I see what the robot events or
the chess computer events are getting as a media attention i think we
need something similar. I know it is not the same if it is not really
a game, but maybe one could make it more fun (webcast, audience at a
computer event).

And i think open source is always winning if it is open for the
competition. I think GIMP is much better today BECAUSE there is
Photoshop. And it would be nice to have a yearly benchmark and to see
what things change. This would also be a kind of usability study.

Maybe the recorded videos of the editing process could be published
and compared in detail. This could also further the knowledge of ho to
do things best and fast.

A jury should look at:
 * how fast is somebody getting a result?
 * is the result really what it should look like?
 * how good is the overall quality?

To make it more difficult (I think this would only make sense after
release of GIMP 2.4) the task also could be to print the results and
to see how good these are.


What do you think of it?

Thilo
--
http://vinci.wordpress.com