On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

Now I am sure you will be worried with the GNU and free software stuff.

Not worried here, but not understanding the benefit of this either.

It would be amazing if we could use steam by using a trustable and multiplataform installer plus... you guys could post updates without us having to download gimp all over again whenever a new version is realeased.

Please don't expect everyone to have a clue what that means or involves:)

Alexandre

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

I think the main benefit would be in the distribution and secondly in the exposure.

I understand that you are excited about Krita + Steam, but there are people who are not familiar with Steam at all, myself included.

Why is it better than the usual distribution channels? What kind of extra work should packagers do on top of what they already do? How much time does it take to prepare builds for this distribution channel?

Alexandre

On 09.02.2014 07:13, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

I think the main benefit would be in the distribution and secondly in the exposure.

Will this require users to get a Steam account to download/use software from this platform then? Seems to be a very hot topic according to some quick searches.

I am no developer But I know that its easy to keepe everyone on the latest version an Steam is a trustable distribution place (more than the old one thats for sure).

Our current one is probably the most trustable, and we don't see that as a temporary solution - the "anything else is not trustable" attitude some users have now isn't the worst, either.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

Am 2014-02-09 12:59, schrieb Michael Schumacher:

On 09.02.2014 07:13, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

I think the main benefit would be in the distribution and secondly in the exposure.

Will this require users to get a Steam account to download/use software from this platform then? Seems to be a very hot topic according to some quick searches.

Yes, you need an account to download and use software (99% of it are games atm).

I am no developer But I know that its easy to keepe everyone on the latest version an Steam is a trustable distribution place (more than the old one thats for sure).

Our current one is probably the most trustable, and we don't see that as a temporary solution - the "anything else is not trustable" attitude some users have now isn't the worst, either.

Steam is surely a much more trustable place then many other sites. Another benefit is the auto-update-feature. Software gets updated automatically as new versions are released, which is pretty nice if there should be i.e. a hot-fix-release. And - if you do it right - it can be a very nice place to beta-test upcoming releases on an audiance that is mostly the opposite of a developer. I don't know how one gets software to be distributed via steam, but I think if you consider it - there should be a dedicated person to manage this. It will be additional work.

Steam is available on Linux too since mid 2013. However it's a closed source system.

Best regards,
Bernhard

El dom, 09-02-2014 a las 10:31 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine escribió:

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

I think the main benefit would be in the distribution and secondly in the exposure.

I understand that you are excited about Krita + Steam, but there are people who are not familiar with Steam at all, myself included.

Why is it better than the usual distribution channels? What kind of extra work should packagers do on top of what they already do? How much time does it take to prepare builds for this distribution channel?

As far as I know, Steam is a Debian derivative. Technically Debian packages should work, so no extra work should be needed since Debian is pretty much up to date with GIMP (at least on testing, I'm not sure what Steam uses).

However, I don't see the benefit. Using any developer time to take care of including GIMP on Steam would be a waste of time. GIMP is free software, and they can include it anytime if they want (and respect the license).

GIMP is way beyond the stage of getting exposure and growing a userbase. The attention should be put on making it better and more suitable to its target audience, and that requires devolopers and a lot of work, and I doubt that Steam (or any other non-free distribution channel) can make any difference in that regard.

Gez.

El dom, 09-02-2014 a las 12:24 -0300, Gez escribió:

As far as I know, Steam is a Debian derivative. Technically Debian...

Sorry for the double-posting. My connection is having hiccups.

Gez.

On Feb 09 2014, 19:25 Gez wrote:

GIMP is way beyond the stage of getting exposure and growing a userbase.

I have some very serious doubts about that :)

The attention should be put on making it better and more suitable to its target audience, and that requires devolopers and a lot of work, and I doubt that Steam (or any other non-free distribution channel) can make any difference in that regard.

That's apples and oranges :) Developers and packagers are not the same people in the GIMP team. I'm slightly concerned about how distributing GIMP through Steam is going to affect packagers, but I'm not worried about developers at all in that regard.

Alexandre

El dom, 09-02-2014 a las 20:20 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine escribió:

On Feb 09 2014, 19:25 Gez wrote:

GIMP is way beyond the stage of getting exposure and growing a userbase.

I have some very serious doubts about that :)

What I meant is that "exposure" is something GIMP already has. It doesn't have a huge userbase because people don't choose it, not because they ignore its existence.
Considering the product vision, I'd say that an important part of the target audience doesn't choose it because some of its limitations. Fortunately those limitations are being addressed, but developer time is required for that to happen, hence...

The attention should be put on making it better and more suitable to its target audience, and that requires devolopers and a lot of work, and I doubt that Steam (or any other non-free distribution channel) can make any difference in that regard.

That's apples and oranges :) Developers and packagers are not the same people in the GIMP team. I'm slightly concerned about how distributing GIMP through Steam is going to affect packagers, but I'm not worried about developers at all in that regard.

Yes, you're right and again I didn't express myself with clarity. In my head :-p the logic was: perhaps making GIMP comply with the requirements of Steam does require some developer work. I'm no sure about this, but what about input devices? It will be ok to include a program which is basically controlled by keyboard/mouse/drawing tablet in a computer intended to work as a game console, or will they require the program to work with their controller?

Blender and Krita developers seem to be willing to push their programs in Steam, so I wouldn't be surprised if they devote some resources to make it happen.
Something that doesn't seem to be the case for GIMP, and that wouldn't report a real benefit to the project.

Gez

On 09.02.2014 16:24, Gez wrote:

As far as I know, Steam is a Debian derivative. Technically Debian packages should work, so no extra work should be needed since Debian is pretty much up to date with GIMP (at least on testing, I'm not sure what Steam uses).

Do not confuse Steam with SteamOS, the operating system.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

El dom, 09-02-2014 a las 17:53 +0100, Michael Schumacher escribió:

On 09.02.2014 16:24, Gez wrote:

As far as I know, Steam is a Debian derivative. Technically Debian packages should work, so no extra work should be needed since Debian is pretty much up to date with GIMP (at least on testing, I'm not sure what Steam uses).

Do not confuse Steam with SteamOS, the operating system.

Oh, you're right! It was about Steam the distribution channel, not about packaging for SteamOS.
For some reason I thought it was about building for SteamOS. I was completely mistaken. Sorry for the noise.

Gez.

Personally I'd use the Steam version of Gimp if it were available. Sure, the on-the-fly updates are no problem for a Linux edition of Steam. But on Mac and Windows there's no such auto-updating functionality (due to the drawbacks of the OS) and GIMP rightly does not try to fill that gap.

In addition to the auto-updates on Windows, a neat statistic would be how much time I spend in the program. They track other usage statistics but to me that would be the most interesting.

Also, Steam allows DRM free packages (i.e. you install via steam but you can take the software out of steam and run it without steam even if steam is not installed or running). So I think no modification would be required from a developers perspective. It would just require the headache of a packager.

I'm not sure the Gimp userbase as it stands would much benefit (unless they play PC games and use Steam) but on an average daily basis there's more than 5 million users logged into Steam using the distribution platform. The largest of it's kind. I think it would bring steam to a wider audience with little to no effort in the long run just by simply existing on Steam. I think a good approach might be to "wait and see" with what Krita does and ask Krita members for feedback on their experience with Steam. If it's positive I see no reason not to do it.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Sam Gleske wrote:

Sure, the on-the-fly updates are no problem for a Linux edition of Steam.

I meant to say "Linux edition of GIMP."

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Sam Gleske wrote:

...but on an average daily basis there's more than 5 million users logged into Steam using the distribution platform. The largest of it's kind.

I should probably back up with a source for statistics. Luckily, Valve provides Steam stats.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

El lun, 10-02-2014 a las 13:57 -0500, Sam Gleske escribió:

Also, Steam allows DRM free packages (i.e. you install via steam but you can take the software out of steam and run it without steam even if steam is not installed or running). So I think no modification would be required from a developers perspective. It would just require the headache of a packager.

Ok, let's see if I can redeem myself after the pointless noise I generated yesterday with a decent question :-)

What about the source code? Does the Steam platform provide a way to distribute the sources of GIMP? Does a link to the sources in the description (pointing to gimp.org downloads section) suffice to comply the GPL requirements?

Gez.

Accidentally replied directly... here goes again. This mailing list should really change the default reply-to on outgoing mailings.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Gez wrote:

What about the source code? Does the Steam platform provide a way to distribute the sources of GIMP?

Not that I'm aware of. If so, then I've not seen any software (gaming or otherwise) take advantage of it.

Does a link to the sources in the

description (pointing to gimp.org downloads section) suffice to comply the GPL requirements?

I would say it does so long as binaries were built from said source code. Since it is being distributed, any modifications made for said distribution would need to be released (if there happened to be any).

Also, for those interested here's a link to Krita attempting Greenlight on Steam.

http://krita.org/item/213-krita-on-steam

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=225403385

Also, I think GIMP project actually selling GIMP on Steam would be beneficial. It seems Krita will be doing that and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I think it has the potential to turn into a nice avenue of funding for the project (perhaps to also provide revenue large enough for full time development). Alas, I get ahead of myself and let's just see what happens.

SAM

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:45 AM, Sam Gleske wrote:

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Gez wrote:

What about the source code? Does the Steam platform provide a way to distribute the sources of GIMP?

Not that I'm aware of. If so, then I've not seen any software (gaming or otherwise) take advantage of it.

I also forgot to mention that COPYING.txt and any license related documentation would need to be distributed with the binaries. It is, before all, GPL.

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Abraham Levi Mireles Alvarez wrote:

It would be amazing if we could use steam by using a trustable and multiplataform installer plus... you guys could post updates without us having to download gimp all over again whenever a new version is real eased. Plus the opens source awesome will get more exposure. It's a win win scenario imo.

I think feedback is overdue here. This was discussed among developers, and while we have a contributor willing to maintain a build for Steam, the core team's opinion currently is that supporting a proprietary software delivery platform doesn't feel right.

Alexandre

I don't think it's fair to call that a consensus. We are currently at a point where no one sees a sufficient reason to do it to overcome the moral niggles about supporting another proprietary platform.

If someone was to figure out what exactly is required to distributed via Steam and volunteer to get everything in order noone would veto it. But as a feature request it doesn't have enough inertia to get done.

(I had been told 2nd hand that Michael Henning who does the current Windows build would be willing to help, but I haven't had luck catching him on IRC to ask if he is actually in favor of the idea.)

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Daniel Sabo wrote:

If someone was to figure out what exactly is required to distributed via Steam and volunteer to get everything in order...

Which part of "we have a contributor willing to maintain a build for Steam," in my previous email do I need to clarify?

Alexandre

Which part of "we have a contributor willing to maintain a build for Steam," in my previous email do I need to clarify?

Levels of enthusiasm. If Michael wants to do it then there is not a consensus stopping him from doing so; my interpretation of your email was that he was only going to do it if there was a lot of enthusiasm on our part.

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Daniel Sabo wrote:

Which part of "we have a contributor willing to maintain a build for Steam," in my previous email do I need to clarify?

Levels of enthusiasm. If Michael wants to do it then there is not a consensus stopping him from doing so; my interpretation of your email was that he was only going to do it if there was a lot of enthusiasm on our part.

1. It wasn't even Michael. Pretty please draw conclusions from something you know for sure.

2. Levels: the person in question studied the requirements and volunteered.

Alexandre

Sorry, the last time I heard about this before you posted this email was you saying on IRC that drawoc had volunteered to do a build. I am really not clear at this point why you posted a message saying we had rejected the idea.

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 4:07 PM, Daniel Sabo wrote:

Sorry, the last time I heard about this before you posted this email was you saying on IRC that drawoc had volunteered to do a build. I am really not clear at this point why you posted a message saying we had rejected the idea.

OK, I obviously failed to draw the link between Mike and Michael. Sorry about that, you were right.

I still don't understand your question about level of enthusiasm. I put it down to language barrier.

Also, I don't understand neither why we are having this conversation, nor where the word "consensus" came from. I implied no consensus.

Alexandre

the core team's opinion currently is that supporting a proprietary software delivery platform doesn't feel right.

I took from this that either drawoc didn't really want to do it or someone else had explicitly asked him not to.

There are several people who have legitimate gripes we this idea of supporting a proprietary distribution system; but noone has said "this shall not pass" yet.

Alexandre Prokoudine (alexandre.prokoudine@gmail.com) wrote:

Also, I don't understand neither why we are having this conversation, nor where the word "consensus" came from. I implied no consensus.

You wrote "the core team's opinion currently is", which implies that the core team (whoever that exactly is) has a consensus on that (which is probably not really the case).

For the records, I am one of the persons objecting against a use of Steam. I think I'll try to explain my reasoning later in this thread.

Bye, Simon

simon@budig.de              http://simon.budig.de/

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 4:41 PM, Daniel Sabo wrote:

the core team's opinion currently is that supporting a proprietary software delivery platform doesn't feel right.

I took from this that either drawoc didn't really want to do it or someone else had explicitly asked him not to.

This was not the case.

To reiterate... To the best of my understanding there is no long-term strategy for involvement with Steam whatsoever, other than "it would be cool, eh?" which is no strategy at all. Hence any voting or similar activities, in my opinion, make very little sense, until this conversation is reasonably formalized, with advantages and disadvantages listed to be judged on. I've witnessed at least three IRC discussions on the topic and they never led to any decisions, just a lot of hot air, and man/hours wasted.

Secondly, during the first discussion mitch and a couple of other core team members (my definition of "core team member" is subjective and should by no means be understood as belittling anyone's involvement, i don't consider myself to be one, just in case) expressed disagreement with an idea that supporting Steam is a good idea -- or this is how _I_ personally understood that. This is exactly what I was referring to in my email. No more, no less.

TL;DR: there is no consensus on Steam yet.

Alexandre

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@gmail.com> wrote:

TL;DR: there is no consensus on Steam yet.

For myself, at least, that's promising. I was willing to drop the subject entirely with no further discussion based on your feedback response. I don't follow IRC as much as the mailing list so I could only take your message at face value.

To the best of my understanding there is no long-term strategy for

involvement with Steam whatsoever

Agreed. At this point it was just a proposal I think. A quote from your earlier message.

the core team's opinion currently is that supporting a proprietary software

delivery platform doesn't feel right.

I'm curious to hear Simon's opinions since he openly admitted he was one of the "against" parties. Generally, I understand how any free developer would feel about a proprietary distribution platform. However, I also see Steam filling a need (in my mind) for automatically updating the software on Windows and Mac clients. From my perspective it's just another repository and so long as it doesn't infringe on the project rights or the GPL I see no reason why the full stack of delivery must be completely open source. I think, that is impossible. There's always proprietary software in the full stack of delivery (even if it's low level below the Kernel). So for myself it's not as much of an issue that Steam be required to open source their platform for software delivery. I simply see it as another option.

Re: Alexandre pros/cons

What sort of pros and cons list would be desired. I realize that's a very open ended question but a start somewhere for building such a list would be useful. So far I can think of the following:

Pros:

- Not a required form of software delivery, only optional. Users can still obtain their GIMP software from the normal channels. - Automatic software updates when new releases are released (this one is extremely minor considering the rate at which GIMP stable is released). Automatic updates can be turned off. - Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux (however I think it should only be maintained for Windows and maybe Mac?). Linux already has centralized software delivery through package managers which I think would be preferred. - GPL friendly. Applications can be delivered without the requirement of remaining within the Steam platform (i.e. it can be moved out of steam and still "work") or even require Steam to be running for launch. This would need to be implemented as a DRM free application for the "it can be moved out of steam and still 'work'" ability. GPL and assorted licenses as well as links to the source code should be provided with the binaries. The Steam TOS does not infringe on the GPL *from my reading* unlike other companies which will not be named. Being DRM free unlimited copies of the binaries are allowed.
- Exposure to 5 million+ active users on a daily basis with little to no marketing effort. source - http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ - *Optional* Steam Cloud for saving GIMP profile information, plugins, and settings to the cloud. When a user re-installs GIMP or installs it using the same method on another computer their settings can be transferred automatically and regularly synced on multiple machines. - *I imagine* news updates in Steam can be linked to the GIMP news feed.

Cons:

- Steam tracks usage statistics. One metric I can tell is that they track how long you use an application (I enjoy this statistic personally). The Steam interface reports back your usage. There are options to disable this. I have listed this as a con because some of our privacy oriented members may not like this so this should be explicitly mentioned. Beyond that I have no idea what else they track (e.g. system calls or who knows). - Steam is proprietary software. There's no way to verify the aforementioned cons.
- Binary only distribution of GIMP however links can be provided to the project website and to the source code. Any modified source code for accommodating the Steam platform (unlikely there will be any modifications) will require source to be released as per the GPL.

It is also worth mentioning that I already run GIMP with Steam. Steam supports non-steam delivered applications to be launched from their interface however you don't get tracking or usage statistics. I also can't install GIMP through Steam currently.

Hopefully, others will add on to that pros/cons list so that core devs can make an informed decision. I include Alexandre as a core member of the project personally due to his contributions on the mailing list and elsewhere.

SAM

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 12:31 PM, Sam Gleske wrote:

Hopefully, others will add on to that pros/cons list so that core devs can

make an informed decision.

Speaking strictly as a reader of the mailing list, the GIMP project is woefully understaffed. Putting GIMP into the hands of tens of thousands of users who are probably not on the primary platform (i.e. Linux) may siphon off valuable developer resources.

If so, would distribution though Stream attract sufficient volunteers to offset this cost?

What would be the consequences if a Steam user downloaded GIMP only to find out that it's still mostly an 8-bit graphics engine? E.g. negative press. And again, would this motive people to chip in if so?

Chris

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Christopher Curtis wrote:

Speaking strictly as a reader of the mailing list, the GIMP project is woefully understaffed. Putting GIMP into the hands of tens of thousands of users who are probably not on the primary platform (i.e. Linux) may siphon off valuable developer resources.

In what way?

If so, would distribution though Stream attract sufficient volunteers to

offset this cost?

There's no way to answer that question. Is it a loaded question? Assuming you're asking "what kind of community is Steam?" The answer is it is mostly and end-user community with a surrounding game modding community (many of whom use GIMP for textures in their mods). In what way does that make a difference in how GIMP is developed? I don't think it makes a difference. We *might* see more users participating on the mailing list which is a good thing IMO. GIMP has always been users supporting users with occasional input from devs. Adding an additional distribution avenue would not change that.

What would be the consequences if a Steam user downloaded GIMP only to find

out that it's still mostly an 8-bit graphics engine? E.g. negative press. And again, would this motive people to chip in if so?

Re: negative press due to 8-bit graphics? This is a well known issue. Most photography blogs who do a comparison including GIMP cite that as a con. I don't see how adding more users (or not adding them) would change that. When a new release is issued it will come with a news update like it would on the GIMP website. Again, your last question is so abstract it is impossible to answer.

I don't really see these as valid concerns. If you have questions that can actually be answered without here-say then I'll attempt to address them.

SAM

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Sam Gleske wrote:

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Christopher Curtis wrote:

Putting GIMP into the hands of tens of thousands of users who are probably not on the primary platform (i.e. Linux) may siphon off valuable developer resources.

In what way?

I'm going to assume that Steam will introduce GIMP to a new market of people who otherwise wouldn't know about it. How do these people engage in the software they get from Steam? Will they just delete it if they don't like it or will they start posting inflammatory remarks on the mailing list? Will they blog about what displeases them attracting others to complain or to bring credence to their complaints? Will there be a rash of new, possibly duplicate even if well-intentioned, bug reports that have to be culled?

If so, would distribution though Stream attract sufficient volunteers to offset this cost?

There's no way to answer that question. Is it a loaded question?

Not intentionally.

Assuming you're asking "what kind of community is Steam?" In what way does that make a difference in how GIMP is developed? GIMP has always been users supporting users with occasional input from devs.

If Steam were Linux-only I might agree. Maintaining "user-friendly" Windows and OSX ports requires platform knowledge and other resources the project doesn't appear to be overflowing with. I'm sure this kind of discussion is in IRC logs somewhere.

I don't really see these as valid concerns. If you have questions that can actually be answered without here-say then I'll attempt to address them.

It's safe to assume that I don't.

Take care, Chris

Sam Gleske (sam.mxracer@gmail.com) wrote:

I'm curious to hear Simon's opinions since he openly admitted he was one of the "against" parties.

Ok, so let me detail some of my concerns. I want to have it clear however, that this is not some sort of "official" statement from the gimp team, this is just my personal opinion.

Also there are multiple issues which I'd like to consider separately, although of course there are interconnections:

First there is this connection to the SourceForge issue. Some time ago we did a deliberate move away from SF and we got a tremendous public response on that. With that as background we need to consider, that a move towards a different commercial hosting platform probably will be perceived as an endorsement of this platform. We have proven in the past that we do very conscious decisions on our software distribution, so Steam somewhat gets the seal of approval from the gimp team.

And rest assured that a decision in favor of Steam will be news.

I am not sure if I am willing to accept this responsibility. I don't have the impression that we carefully evaluated the privacy implications of that move, and we don't know a lot on "how good" steam as a platform is. Given that we don't really have an urgent problem with making gimp available to people I don't see any benefit for us that would compensate for the "Steam-advertizing".

Secondly I believe that we have a certain responsibility towards the privacy of our users. By using Steam we are encouraging people to create an account there, provide download statistics as well as (to an unknown extent) usage data. We let them generate marketing data for Valve, which they can use to targeted offerings to their users, depending on their documented gimp download.

If Gimp is the reason why someone creates a steam account: do we want to accept this responsibility? I know that I am preaching to my friends and family about how to use adblock and reducing the data footprint in the net. For myself I am going through a lot of troubles to minimize me being a data source as well as being locked into certain technologies.

It would be disingenious for me (and that includes me as a gimp contributor) to advertize Steam.

Thirdly there is the philosophical (and most complicated) aspect: Is this "store" way of distributing software something we can accept and use for ourselves?

By "store" I am referring to the commercially controlled software repositories, for the sake of this discussion I am limiting myself to itunes, google play and steam. Here commercial entities set the conditions for access to their userbase. The most blatant example is apple, where developers have to pay fees to be able to provide the software to their users - and free software seems to be incompatible with the conditions of the store.

Certainly there are varying degrees of strings attached to the respective stores. But we have to realize that the conditions for a store are subject to change depending on money-making interests.

By using a store we are submitting ourselves to the conditions of the store, we (who?) have to accept the terms and conditions of that store. Should later something change we have to abandon the users which got gimp through steam - we lose "our" communication channel to them.

To me it feels like we are losing some of our freedom.

On the other side this "store" approach to software distribution is a highly competitive market, which works by segregating the users into different camps and keeping them hostage there. We see it with the smartphones: suddenly it is quite important what brand of smartphone you have, because the software offerings are quite different. The users lose their freedom to install the software they need, because the device determines the software available to them. Dual-booting into different OSes as a workaround for specific software needs is generally impossible on smartphones, switching to a different camp means that you lose the software you bought and/or installed.

I worry about the attempts to introduce this kind of software distribution to the PC market, because we are already seeing the mechanisms being developed to make dual-booting harder, introducing DRM into the whole chain of hard/software, and "stores" are becoming a thing for PCs as well. I am assuming that we will see more of that and we might end up in the same disaster as with smartphones. I don't want that and I don't want to endorse the development in this direction. To me the philosophical aspect of Free Software is important and I think it is vital for our future, that users keep the freedom to tinker with their devices.

I realize that this is a forward looking statement - using Steam will not immediately result in the loss of said freedoms. But I really don't like the development in this direction and would like to avoid backing it.

TL;DR: Nope, I don't like it.

Bye, Simon

PS: I realize that there is a lot where one could quibble about the details. The discussion above is quite Meta, so to me the actual details (like what are the *actual* conditions of the Steam store) don't matter very much - especially since business transactions easily can change the game quickly and without warning: I find it hilarious how suddenly WhatsApp-users are scrambeling for alternatives since WhatsApp got bought by Facebook.

simon@budig.de              http://simon.budig.de/

On 6.3.2014 at 1:59 PM Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

To reiterate... To the best of my understanding there is no long-term strategy for involvement with Steam whatsoever, other than "it would be cool, eh?" which is no strategy at all. Hence any voting or similar activities, in my opinion, make very little sense, until this conversation is reasonably formalized, with advantages and disadvantages listed to be judged on. I've witnessed at least three IRC discussions on the topic and they never led to any decisions, just a lot of hot air, and man/hours wasted.

I fully agree with you.

Here are my pros and cons:

Pros: - more users,
- more creative possible applications for GIMP, - we are early enough on the Steam platform to say we haven't missed that, - automatic update.

Cons:
- Steam is mainly a gaming platform. Thus in future GIMP will quite probably be considered a toy. This doesn't match to our product vision to be a high-end graphics software.
- We have been only a few developers for years and still are. - There are so many other open tasks, like high bit image editing, improving performance and usability, adding useful features etc. Better doing one thing right that starting a thousand things and leaving them unfinished. What we don't miss on the Steam platform will we lose on our current platforms where our target users are.

To me none of the Pros is really a Wow!-argument. For the automatic update we can also learn from the Mozilla people and their automatic browser updates. Even our Jenkins offers the possibilities to deliver updates often and with some coding automatically.

In my opinion there's more to this than throwing a build over the wall. We should also consider:
1. What's the concrete benefit we offer our target users with this step? 2. Are so many users of our target audience (intensive GIMP users) using the Steam platform to make the efforts worth it? 3. Who will support GIMP on Steam, i.e. implements platform specific features, writes documentation, tests, cares for the bugs, fixes them and cares for the Steam community? Who will deliver further builds when the current volunteer discontinues his/her builds? 4. How will we deal with feature requests to support gamer hardware? Who will care for it?
5. Steam is a commercial platform. When creating an account the users contract a subscription with Valve. Valve is a company and sells/rents software and somewhere the money has to come from. Do we want to offer GIMP for money? If yes, at what price? How will we spend that money? Who will pay the taxes for the revenues? 6. How can we hedge the risk that Valve could start delivering GIMP with adware or similar stuff harming GIMP's reputation? (I remember the recent Sourceforge issue).
7. @Boudewijn: You Krita people brought Krita to Steam and might have asked yourselves similar questions before: What else should we consider?

To me personally it is the same whether we deliver GIMP solely on an open or proprietary channel. I consider the other questions more serious. If we don't want to be seen as simpletons, who enthusiastically start one thing and then fail with flying colours, we should think first.

To discuss the platform topic as a whole I've put it on Schumaml's LGM meeting's agenda.

TL;DR: This is a big step that needs more consideration than throwing a build over the wall. To me it doesn't really offer a benefit.

Kind regards,

Sven

On 03/06/2014 09:01 PM, Simon Budig wrote:

Secondly I believe that we have a certain responsibility towards the privacy of our users. By using Steam we are encouraging people to create an account there, provide download statistics as well as (to an unknown extent) usage data. We let them generate marketing data for Valve, which they can use to targeted offerings to their users, depending on their documented gimp download.

If Gimp is the reason why someone creates a steam account: do we want to accept this responsibility? I know that I am preaching to my friends and family about how to use adblock and reducing the data footprint in the net. For myself I am going through a lot of troubles to minimize me being a data source as well as being locked into certain technologies.

Your reasoning seems to imply that Steam will become the sole source for Gimp downloads, while as I understand it it will only be an additional source. Making Gimp available on Steam would not be pushing people towards Steam, it would make Gimp more easily visible/available to those people with a Steam account. And let's be modest here, Steam has 65 millions active users, they don't need Gimp to be popular :)

Ofnuts (ofnuts@laposte.net) wrote:

Your reasoning seems to imply that Steam will become the sole source for Gimp downloads, while as I understand it it will only be an additional source. Making Gimp available on Steam would not be pushing people towards Steam, it would make Gimp more easily visible/available to those people with a Steam account. And let's be modest here, Steam has 65 millions active users, they don't need Gimp to be popular :)

I am fully aware that there will be other gimp sources than steam and I am fully aware that the success of Steam does not depend on gimp. However, That doesn't have - as far as I can see - any effect on my musings.

As for "pushing": I did not use that word in my mail. However, it is easy to imagine that gimp availability on steam might convince people to create an account, if only for the oh-so-convenient auto-updates. And immediately we are in the situation I use as the base for my considerations.

Bye,
Simon

simon@budig.de              http://simon.budig.de/

2014-03-07 2:06 GMT+01:00 Simon Budig :

As for "pushing": I did not use that word in my mail. However, it is easy to imagine that gimp availability on steam might convince people to create an account, if only for the oh-so-convenient auto-updates. And immediately we are in the situation I use as the base for my considerations.

Simon is right, auto-updates are nice. I think GIMP should implement an auto-update function for Windows. Perhaps the code for this can be copied from Firefox.

Regards
Tobias

Simon is right, auto-updates are nice. I think GIMP should implement an auto-update function for Windows. Perhaps the code for this can be copied from Firefox.

When we talk about taking up developer time asking to implement a (windows specific) auto-update system, which will also require a server side system to be set up and maintained, is a lot more work to take on. It is safe to say that won't happen without a new volunteer.

On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:58 AM, Daniel Sabo wrote:

When we talk about taking up developer time asking to implement a (windows specific) auto-update system, which will also require a server side system to be set up and maintained, is a lot more work to take on. It is safe to say that won't happen without a new volunteer.

Agreed I rather gimp-core and gegl be the focus of the current core devs.

* Daniel Sabo [01-01-70 12:34]:

I don't think it's fair to call that a consensus. We are currently at a point where no one sees a sufficient reason to do it to overcome the moral niggles about supporting another proprietary platform.

If someone was to figure out what exactly is required to distributed via Steam and volunteer to get everything in order noone would veto it. But as a feature request it doesn't have enough inertia to get done.

(I had been told 2nd hand that Michael Henning who does the current Windows build would be willing to help, but I haven't had luck catching him on IRC to ask if he is actually in favor of the idea.)

cannot see that this:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gimp-on-rollapp/eodhmnkhmnkmimhckfpkgmbmcgjkaddo?hl=en

is much different than what would result from involvement with steam. For the record, I do not want to see steam support and believe google should take down the cited url.

(paka)Patrick Shanahan       Plainfield, Indiana, USA          @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org    openSUSE Community Member    facebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.org        Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535                    @ http://linuxcounter.net

On 03/08/2014 08:32 PM, Paka wrote:

cannot see that this:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gimp-on-rollapp/eodhmnkhmnkmimhckfpkgmbmcgjkaddo?hl=en

is much different than what would result from involvement with steam. For the record, I do not want to see steam support and believe google should take down the cited url.

RollApp explains how they make money:

*"Free" access to cloud-based applications, where the price is the forced viewing of a 15-30 second video ad every 15 minutes (https://www.rollapp.com/advertisers)

*"Pay" access to the same applications. Gimp can be rented ad-free for $1.99 a month (https://www.rollapp.com/pricing):

In either case, any user-produced content can't be saved to the user's hard drive, only to the cloud.

In addition to GIMP, RollApp offers OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Inkscape, MyPaint, Dia, DarkTable, a bunch of games, bluefish, Scribus, and a long list of other floss softwares (https://www.rollapp.com/apps).

At least some of the RollApp floss softwares are from the Ubuntu repository (http://blog.rollapp.com/2014/02/ubuntu-apps.html).

RollApp's eventual goal is to attract distributors of proprietary software (https://www.rollapp.com/developers).

RollApp's terms of service require that users submit to the usual electronic monitoring (https://www.rollapp.com/terms).

RollApp's privacy policy is the usual boilerplate: they collect, store, and share whatever suits their changing business model and/or whatever law enforcement agency might want access to personal data (https://www.rollapp.com/privacy).

Is there any conceivable benefit to GIMP (or any floss software) in being made available through RollApp?

Is there any way to persuade/force RollApp to remove GIMP from RollApp?

Elle Stone