Because GNU are on a Mission. They’re not out to make things people want, they’re out to make things people ought to be wanting (according to them). This is not necessarily bad - the world needs some idealists - but it does interfere with fundraising.
this seems like a purposely malicious take on it. GNU people, and the people who develop the gimp, are on a mission to make things they WANT TO MAKE. How do you get the nerve to prescribe them as some form of missionaries that goes around telling people "you should want to modify your layers THIS way, simpleton" ?
And as far as free software, I think they generally think "people ought to care more about freedom for everyone, than closing stuff up"
It is a purposely malicious take! The question was why the GNU project has put itself in a place where it cannot assign resources to the GIMP project, to make GIMP more like what the average person wants it to be.
The GIMP developers say “we want our layers to work like this, take it or leave it”, and they have every right to do so. They write the code, they pay their own bills, they get to call the shots.
The GNU people say “software should be free-as-in-speech”. That is certainly their right, and to some extent I agree with them. However, that ideological stance means that the GNU project does not have any resources it can assign to the GIMP project (or anyone, for that matter).
