GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 793522
Request Gimp is added to the Windows Store
Last modified: 2018-05-24 19:09:22 UTC
The windows store is a great way of reaching new users, other open source applications such as Inkscape and even Ubuntu already have a presence. I feel that entering Gimp in the Windows store would increase its presence and encourage more users to try it. Is this something that might be considered?
I personally don't see any problem for it, but that mostly depends on conditions for getting there. Are there license conditions? Is there a fee? (fee can be a problem since we don't like to pay just to have the right to distribute our software, cf. also the question for macOS: bug 769684) Of course it also requires a maintainer for this specific release, someone who will stick around, who will make new builds quickly as we release versions, fix bugs regularly, who will follow up on issues. That's one of the main problems since we have no dedicated Windows developer currently. Well we have some who patch regularly, but not sure that would be enough for a Windows store release. And then we have the usual developers (mostly using Linux) who fix Windows bugs from time to time, but not sure any of us wants to really use much more of our time for a package on a platform we don't even use. Personally I would really like people on Windows taking care of their own platform. P.S.: weird that we don't have a bug report for this already, but I indeed could not find any.
> Is this something that might be considered? So the answer is yes, it might be considered. We have nothing against it. We are mostly waiting for someone to take the lead on this topic.
(In reply to Jehan from comment #1) > P.S.: weird that we don't have a bug report for this already, but I indeed > could not find any. That would be bug #784597.
Thanks for the fast responses. There is a $99 one time fee for a company developer account, $19 for an individual. I'd be happy to help fund and test for bugs. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/publish/account-types-locations-and-fees
(In reply to Simon H from comment #4) > Thanks for the fast responses. There is a $99 one time fee for a company > developer account, $19 for an individual. I'd be happy to help fund and test > for bugs. Thanks. That's a point for the funding. Now we'll still need someone to take care of maintenance. :-) > https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/publish/account-types-locations- > and-fees I see that a "Company account"… > Requires that your company is recognized as such in the country or region in which it is located Well GIMP is not a company and not even a registered entity at all (in any country). So I guess we could just get an individual account. Apparently this has restricted capabilities, but I'm not sure how much GIMP would need some of the special capabilities (I had a very quick look at the restricted capabilities and could not find anything we absolutely need; but once again, that was a very quick skim through). Though it's a little sad that GIMP would not even be allowed to access intranet files unless we get a company account. They are doing very weird limitations. Of course maybe it is possible to create a company account through a non-profit close to GIMP, such as GNOME or LILA. But anyway we'd still need a maintainer for such package as well. That's still a missing (and major!) part to go forward. :-)
From a purely technical point, the requirement to have Windows 10 to even begin to think about offering packages in the Windows store is a blocker.
It seems odd that the GIMP devs and contributors who devote so much time and energy to making GIMP great, are also being asked to devote time and money to accomodate the demands of two vendors of proprietary software, namely Apple and Windows. What is the upside of devoting money and time to putting GIMP in the "Windows store", whatever that is? I mean the upside from the point of view of the various GIMP developers and contributors. Will having GIMP in the Windows store bring in money for GIMP as a software project? Will it attract new contributors? Apple wants money for a "code signing", and this seems required to allow Mac users to install GIMP. Windows wants money for, well, I don't know what they want the money for, other than the bottom line. What's next? These fees seem like a bad precedent.
I kind of agree with Elle that the more it goes, the more it feels like we are asked to pay just to be allowed to develop software (or at least to give the right to people to install the software we developed). This being said, I am still not against if *someone* wants to use one's time and money to make this happen because they actually also need it (same as I develop GIMP because I need it to improve, myself). But then we get to the same conclusion: we still need this *someone* who will want to do this. To this day, such person has not appeared yet.
Well I also think it's complete nonsense for application that is completly free for users and even devs are not payed for their job. What are the benefits of having Gimp in some store? I see only cons - paying fee, maintenance, ... If somebody has some money to spare, it's better to donate them to devs (something like "adopt your developer" ;-)).
It helps by increasing exposure to the app and making it easier for new users to install. This has the potential to help Gimp find new donors, sponsors, users and volunteers as well as introducing the public to the idea of GNU Open Source software and it's many benefits. Anyone who uses apt, brew, pip, synaptic etc understands the advantage of having software available to easily download. It is essentially a very cheap one time payment of $20, that will give increased exposure to Gimp by having it available in the Windows store.
To me, the main issue isn't the money, rather than the fact that we got zero insightful feedback so far from the "Let's get GIMP on the Windows store" community about what issues they have encountered when trying to convert the existing installers into UWP packages (someone hinted that the 32/64 bit executable mix of the stable installers is an issue, but without going into details). Judging from the tutorials, this is not much more difficult than running some command line tool - and whether this fails or succeeds, there will be some useful output outlining any actual issues to be solved. I tried this myself once, but after installing various Microsoft SDK version on my Windows 7 system and constantly not finding the recommended tools I finally figured out that those will only be available on Windows 10. My expectation is that someone who absolutely wants GIMP to appear on the Windows store has to become a member of the development team (meaning: be present on the mailing lists and/or IRC, have a general understanding of software development, share progress, be active, ...), otherwise I do not expect much progress here.
Specifically, what we want to see is someone follow the process outlined in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/packaging/create-app-package-with-makeappx-tool and report about any issues they encounter. From what the instructions look like there, it should be possible to pack an installed GIMP folder into a package suitable for distribution on the windows store (in theory, at least - and assuming that one doesn't have to worry about e.g. signing too much just to try the general principle locally).
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