No, GIMP is not free Nor any open source program for that matter.It costs the time and effort our brilliant developers gift us and yes even money because their work has a lot of value....So why we keep pretending it is really "free".

Yes we all know the ideal that GNU and "open source" is to remove the power from evil and greedy corporations and give true freedom to the people. But the truth is that ... many professionals and people foreign to the " opensource" ideals still prefer any paid software.

Call people like adobe greedy for creative cloud as much as you want but the truth is having money gives you power and people are willing to pay the overpriced photoshop because regardless of the pricetag is a quality software worth the price and because many people would rather pay for something that works rather to use something free that doesn't. (I am not talking about GIMP)

Software like photoshop, acorn ,corel painter sketchbook pro etc have professionals that work at least 8 hours a day to create a quality product.

I love gimp and I admire what the developers do (seriously working for free and give us something so amazing) You guys rock!.

But let's stop kidding ourselves that unpaid software will match private software anytime soon. not becuase Gimp developers aren't extremely talented but becuase they simply can't work on this full time.

Why rely on the free time of talented developers and donations (aka pay when "you feel like it" that nobody uses?.

Why not pay them for their hard work? why we don't pay for developers to work in open source like GIMP as if it was a job?. Gimp is an will always be free but Why we not as users pay to have developers work on this proyect?

The software itself might be "free" but the hard work it costs to make has a value and ergo isn't free.

Think of the GEGL transition. Wouldn't we already be done with some extra paid work?.

I think one day we as fans of gimp should have this option. To pay developers to work fro GIMP

Have a nice day!