Reading about open source and free software, as par Richard Stallman’s take, I realized that though I’ve never really jumped on Linux, I do have experience with a certain pet-project of the free software/open source world: GIMP.
While I physically cringe searching the title in Google, “GIMP” is a free software photo and picture editing tool. It has many of the same capabilities of the popular Adobe Photoshop software, without the $700+ price tag. Of course, there are some serious advantages to the more costly Adobe product (more filter options, more intuitive controls, enhanced responsiveness), but overall, especially for the casual user, GIMP preforms admirably as a replacement for otherwise outlandishly expensive software.
Prior to reading the Stallman articles I had never really been exposed to the debate about, much less between, open source and free software. I knew bits and pieces about it, but I definitely wasn’t aware that there was such an ideological component underlying the free software argument. Reading “Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software,” however, reminded me of what initially attracted me to GIMP.
I started using Photoshop, in some version, over half a decade ago. I didn’t pay the box price, as my father works for a large government administration and was able to secure a copy that way. When I got my laptop shortly before coming to college, however, I didn’t install Photoshop right away — though I certainly could have badgered my dad for another disc.
After hearing about GIMP, I downloaded it instead to try it out. I liked the sort of spunky, scrappy aspect of using software that more or less did what Adobe did without the crippling cost. Since either version was not going to personally cost me anything, price didn’t factor into my decision nearly as much as a certain respect for the scale of the project that GIMP was tackling.
Though I’m not sure exactly what folks working at Adobe think about programs like GIMP, I think that free — not just the “free speech” type but also the “free beer” type — play an important role in offering an alternative to less-than-legal software sharing. After all, though torrenting software may not require the most advanced computer knowledge or present a huge inconvenience, downloading a program like GIMP requires less technical know-how and takes a lot less effort.
Plus, you don’t have to worry about some angry legal department knocking down your door.
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I think the case of GIMP is particularly apt for this discussion because it sheds light on a common paradox: a friend of mine back in Pittsburgh is going to community college for computer science and web design. He does a lot of illegal downloading, but he said that the stuff that he really feels bad about for pirating is Final Cut and similar expensive software. However, to not download it would put him in a particularly tough spot: most of the employment opportunities in his field required having experience using these expensive programs, but he couldn’t afford to buy them and they weren’t available through his school.
I wonder how we could solve this problem through legal means.
It’s interesting that given the option between GIMP and Photoshop, you would choose GIMP, Nicole. This makes me wonder why Adobe still has such an enormous customer base.
I guess Superhawk makes a good point, though. Future employers would much rather see “Proficient in Adobe Photoshop” than “Proficient in GIMP” on a prospective employee’s resume. In general, it’s just a more professional program. If both programs do essentially the same thing, though, I have a feeling that the stigma against products like GIMP won’t stay for long.
After all, if the Adobe products continue to be obnoxiously overpriced, I think the amount of people using the free (as in free beer) software will slowly become the majority. And, if the majority of people use GIMP instead of Photoshop, I don’t think employers will continue to have a preference.
I guess that’s one way to “stop” the Photoshop pirating!
I have two main reasons why I don’t think there would be a general movement to GIMP. The first is that Adobe, like Microsoft Office (go Open Office!), is the industry standard, which means that there has to be interoperability between GIMP and Adobe. If you can’t import your work from GIMP into Adobe and continue to work on it, then the program will fail in the software market when it comes to business use, especially small businesses that do a lot of collaborative work.
The second reason, which is often overlooked, is the lack of tech support for GIMP. As with most Free (as in free speech) and Open Source software, all of the support for the program is going to come from forums that deal with the program, and Google searching a problem to fix any specific problem, like I have to do with Ubuntu, is not a serious option for any business. There needs to be someone you can call and e-mail who can work you through any issue you may have with the program. This is where I see Open Source and Free Software making their money:
We’ll give our program out for free, but if you want help, you’ll have to subscribe for our tech support, which includes a small team of dedicated programmers who can write you a patch to solve your problem with reasonable speed.
It works best all the way around to do that. A high school or college student that is interested in / needs experience in a program can download it for free and search forums for help with understanding it, while businesses have to option to get real-time help.
I wonder if this will ever come to pass though….
Somewhat related story: when I recently applied for an internship with a small business, experience with photoediting came up. I described my experience with Photoshop, but also mentioned that I use a free photoediting program now. I was asked if it was GIMP, and when I confirmed, the interviewee let me know that they actually use GIMP in their office.
While I agree that Photoshop definitely has some value simply from being the most used software in a professional setting, I think that in a business/job atmosphere the skills you know are more relevant than the specific software. Even if someone was unfamiliar with GIMP and familiar with Photoshop, you could probably explain to them GIMP’s features and the basic similarity between the two programs. That is, unless your potential job focused maybe solely on very high level functions in Photoshop.
On the subject of tech-support, I do think that would stop GIMP from reaching very large business, or even smaller businesses with less tech-savvy folks. However, in the office where I intern, GIMP is the standard program. I guess it really depends on what you want to do, too. If you’re into really heavy web design or graphic design, you will probably need to go with Photoshop for the support options, as some big bucks can ride on getting a perfect color match/filter setting/etc for a graphic. However even in a moderately sized building, if all you really need to do is fiddle with some brightness-contrast and resize, GIMP is worlds better than any free Microsoft product, and sooo much more reasonable than purchasing office copies of Photoshop.
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