[sam_goody]

Actually, Serif has ventured surprisingly deeply into Adobe's territory.

I know professional designers that prefer Affinity for many projects. They still pay for Adobe, still use Adobe often (and agree that when they need it - Affinity is not yet close), but actually prefer Affinity for some projects.

Now, even taking on Affinity will cost more than a few hundred thou, but if you can get traction the sky is the limit.

One idea would be to fork Gimp, focus mostly on the UI, and allow for all changes to be pulled back upstream. That would essentially turn them into the steward for GiMP, but may give them access to talent that otherwise would be out of reach and that would split the community.