ROI in OSS (was: GIMP 2.2 splash screen ...)
Fred
puissante at lrc.puissante.com
Sun Dec 5 04:27:01 EST 2004
On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:38, Benjamin Scott wrote:
...
> Hmmmm. Cost/benefit analysis. Return on investment.
>
> With a commercial product, you estimate cost, you estimate resulting
> sales, and subtract the latter from the former. If the result is positive,
> you do it.
>
> It's much harder to quantify things when it comes to a community project
> like GIMP. Most or all of the labor is unpaid volunteerism; most of the
> development cost is picked up by individuals. There are no sales figures.
> Many of the developers are also the users. I'm pretty sure we're either
> gonna get a "Divide by zero" or "Stack overflow" error trying to evaluate
> that equation. But if your goal is to get as many people as possible to use
> GIMP, then introducing UI elements designed to aide Photoshop users in a
> transition would be very valuable indeed.
Yes. True. Problem is, creating a GUI is *hard work*, really hard work.
While I would love to see all the Photoshop people flock over to Gimp, I
myself would not have the time to put all that effort into it when my
kids still must eat. Unless I can do it in a weekend or two, the "value"
must translate at some point into $$$$$.
If you actually *need* something of the caliber of Photoshop, most
likely you'll be able to fork over the grand. If you are just a
"hobbyist" or casual user who can't afford the grand, you don't mind
learning Gimp for free. If you have brains beyond that of the mere
graphic artist, you'll not have trouble learning Gimp anyway.
So, while it's a nice idea to put a Photoshop wrapper on Gimp, the *real
market* for it isn't there. At least not enough to justify the enormous
effort.
It's more work than it appears at first. If the wrapped Gimp behaves
even slightly different from Photoshop, die-hard Photoshop users will
reject it. I mean, look at OpenOffice vs. MS Office. Microsoft does not
seem to be hurting in the least from OO. Sun did a good job with OO, but
even with Sun backing it MS Office still rules the day.
--
Fred Mitchell, HydraNuke.com
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