Summary: Canonical at a crossroad after deciding to remove GIMP from the CD-ROM; potential replacements not finalised yet

THE DEMOTION of the GIMP in Ubuntu GNU/Linux is still being discussed and Mono folks choose to stay out of it, including one of the developers of F-Spot, Stephane Delcroix (see "Mono and GNOME 3.0".

Rumor has it that, during latest UDS, Ubuntu planned to drop Gimp from the default distro and the LiveCD. I won't comment this decision as 1) I have no clue if that's a rumor or more, 2) it was already commented too much, 3) I'm not a whiner, 4) there's a rationale behind that decision and I think I understand it, 5) the full Gimp is only one apt-get away.

He says he "won't comment [about] this decision," but then he does comment about it.

According to this report, now is the chance to propose a Mono-free substitute.

This means that a complex program like The GIMP with its large amount of plugins and intimidating interface has been shown the door. A replacement graphics package has not yet been determined.

Canonical can add the latest gThumb [1, 2] and reduce/remove dependency on Mono.

In other news, Novell's Sandy Armstrong puts Mono deeper inside Ubuntu (Ubuntu One) and Astrum has made this quick appearance in the OpenSUSE Web site.

On wednesday Will and me visited the Usability Symposium 2009 of the Network for User Oriented Software Design, a group which consists mainly of people from the Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences here in Nuernberg and people from local companies such as Astrum. It was the first symposium of this group and they gave three presentations about software usability.

For those who cannot or do not remember, Astrum sued Novell after Novell had stabbed it in the back (they were partners). Novell cannot be trusted. Neither can Mono/Microsoft. ⬆

"I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue"

--Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist