[prokoudine]

> There’s a certain section of open source devs who fight tooth-and-nail against better UX... GIMP is peak that attitude.

Except the GIMP team worked with a UX architect for several years. That's how you got single-window mode, convenient rectangular/ellipse selection and cropping tool, polygonal selection tool built into lasso, the unified transform tool, and more.

And even after Peter (the UX guy) departed, the team still made a bunch of UX improvements (and continues making them, time-permitting).

> Affinity Photo was made by a small team, so it’s clear it’s not manpower but attitude.

Serif Ltd. is 200 to 500 employees. They have paid developers working full time. They had the funds to start from scratch and build on their previous experience creating similar applications.