{"id":4436,"date":"2017-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?guid=74ca0b36d66451d34f8e2a420176855c"},"modified":"2017-05-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T22:00:00","slug":"an-interview-with-michael-schumacher-gimp-administrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?p=4436","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Michael Schumacher, GIMP\u00a0administrator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is the second of a series of interviews of various people surrounding <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> development and community. See also the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2017\/03\/01\/an-interview-with-michael-natterer-gimp-maintainer\/\">interview of Mitch, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;maintainer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> is made not only by hard-core developers but also through the hard work of many less technically-inclined contributors.<br \/>\nMichael Schumacher, <em>aka<\/em> Schumaml, is a great example of an important core contributor who has been with the project for over 10 years.  Mostly known as the project administrator, nowadays he takes care of everything but programming: administrative tasks, management, <span class=\"caps\">PR<\/span>,&nbsp;support\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Schumaml was recently named the maintainer of the 2.8 branch, the stable version of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> which only receives bugfixes, showing that it does not require a developer to manage important roles&nbsp;successfully.<\/p>\n<p>This interview was held on Saturday, February 4, 2017, at about 12:27 <span class=\"caps\">AM<\/span> in front of a fireplace and after a day of hacking at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2017\/01\/18\/wilberweek-2017-announced\/\">Wilber Week<\/a>. With us were several team members, including Debarshi Ray (Rishi (R)), \u00d8yvind Kol\u00e5s (pippin (P)) and Simon Budig who also asked&nbsp;questions.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-interview-950w.jpg?resize=920%2C548&#038;ssl=1\" alt='Schumaml, the tie-bearing GIMP office manager' width=\"920\" height=\"548\"><figcaption>\nSchumaml, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> administrator (<small>photo by antenne used by permission (<a class='cc' href='https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/' title='Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International'>cba<\/a>)<\/small>)<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Jehan: Hello Michael. You are the <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> administrator, at least that&#8217;s what everybody&nbsp;says.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Schumaml:<\/strong> That&#8217;s what everybody says,&nbsp;yes.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: How would you describe your contribution to the <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;project?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t do much coding. It&#8217;s just that so many people \u2014 from my perspective \u2014 do coding on <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> already and have a better grasp of the source code and how it is made up. So I don&#8217;t think I can contribute much in that regard. I try to do administrative stuff like handling the monetary aspect of the project such as telling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gnome.org\/\"><span class=\"caps\">GNOME<\/span><\/a> that we need money for events like Wilber Week or for <span class=\"caps\">LGM<\/span> reimbursements\u2026<br \/>\nI also care about the <a href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.gnome.org\/page.cgi?id=browse.html&amp;product=GIMP\">bug reports<\/a> we have. I try to have them categorized, have a proper status, make sure that they get replies, and that we don&#8217;t leave a bug report unattended for a long time.<br \/>\nAlso, I have administrative privileges on the <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> web server, on mailing lists, and\u2026 what else. Do I forget anything? That&#8217;s about it,&nbsp;yeah.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been called the tie-wearing <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> office manager and I even got a t-shirt with a printed tie and a &#8220;<span class=\"caps\">TWOM<\/span>&#8221; label, because I&#8217;ve actually been wearing a proper shirt (made to measure) at one <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> meeting during the <a href=\"http:\/\/libregraphicsmeeting.org\/2012\/\">Libre Graphics Meeting 2012<\/a> in&nbsp;Vienna.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-twom-480x702.jpg?resize=480%2C702&#038;ssl=1\" alt='Schumaml, the tie-wearing GIMP office manager' width=\"480\" height=\"702\"><figcaption>\nSchumaml, the tie-wearing <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> office manager (<small><a href='https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/the_houz\/8663090451\/in\/album-72157633284677024\/' title='Photo of Schumaml by houz'>photo by houz<\/a> (<a class='cc' href='https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/' title='Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International'>cba<\/a>)<\/small>).<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>J: How long have you been&nbsp;contributing?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I think I started <a href=\"https:\/\/git.gnome.org\/browse\/gimp\/commit\/?id=f7d599851c7fce5d289410cb568d515bcf737466\">somewhere between 2001 and 2004<\/a>. The first contributions were probably getting <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> buildable on <span class=\"caps\">MSYS<\/span>, the minimal <span class=\"caps\">GNU<\/span> build system on the Windows platform. Because I was annoyed that there were only <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> builds for releases and not for every commit in&nbsp;between.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Was it like nightly&nbsp;builds?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> No it was not like nightly builds. I just wanted to be able to have a current build <strong>for<\/strong> the <span class=\"caps\">MS<\/span> Windows platform and also made <strong>on<\/strong> the <span class=\"caps\">MS<\/span> Windows platform, so that I could build on my Windows system I was using at the time. Just to be able to follow <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> development more closely than using a build someone made for a development&nbsp;release.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: So you mostly use <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> on&nbsp;Windows?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Back more than 10 years ago, I did use Windows exclusively. So basically, back then I had done the porting of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> to the Windows&nbsp;platform.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: Do you use <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I use <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>. Not as much as many other people but I use it to test many things of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> itself. I use it to edit photos I make. I don&#8217;t publish many of the images because when I&#8217;m editing them, I print them or I use them for some documentation work, so it goes to a customer. I even still use it on <span class=\"caps\">MS<\/span> Windows, but now my main platform is&nbsp;Linux.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: What kind of job do you&nbsp;do?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I&#8217;m working for a company that used to be a part of Siemens, which had been carved out by now. We are selling communication systems &#8211; in the past, you would have called these telephony systems. Nowadays this stuff is called &#8220;Communication Enabled Business Processes&#8221;, like everything which has to do with communication: calling someone or texting someone or exchanging chats or whatever. We are providing the software, the service, and the&nbsp;consulting.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: Why do you contribute to <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> It started due to pure selfishness: being able to have the most current <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> available to&nbsp;me.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, a lot has changed: I believe in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gnu.org\/philosophy\/free-sw.en.html\">Free Software<\/a>. I believe software should be available for everyone for every purpose. <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> is a Free Software project. Around the time I got hooked up with <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>, I also got hooked up with Wikipedia, which follows the same approach towards knowledge. I feel like \u2014 yeah well \u2014 I&#8217;m contributing to something that helps a lot of people all over the world. I think that&#8217;s a good thing. <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> happens to be the the first major project I contributed to, and I like it. It&#8217;s also in-line with the topics I specialized in at university: image synthesis, image manipulation. It kind of seemed like a logical&nbsp;extension.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-lgm2014-800w.jpg?resize=800%2C459&#038;ssl=1\" alt='Schumaml, the tie-bearing GIMP office manager' width=\"800\" height=\"459\"><figcaption>\n<em>Not<\/em> the Formula One driver. (<small>Photo by Pat David (<a class='cc' href='https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/' title='Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International'>cba<\/a>)<\/small>)<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>Rishi: What do you think of Michael&nbsp;Schumacher?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> (laughs) The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Schumacher\">formula one driver<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p><em>R:&nbsp;Yeah.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> First thing, you know about his current condition, like probably still in the coma. I hope that he will get better. He probably won&#8217;t make it to his former self but at least to a state allowing him to live in a somewhat decent way.<br \/>\nHe got famous when I was in the so-called German &#8220;Gymnasium&#8221; (part of secondary education). It was a bit of an annoyance then &#8211;  I got the same nickname &#8211; &#8220;Schumi&#8221; &#8211; as he had. I didn&#8217;t follow his career too closely, but knew about every race he won because I would be congratulated at&nbsp;school.<\/p>\n<p><em>pippin: Have you ever made use of sharing the&nbsp;name?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> No I haven&#8217;t. It got me an interview opportunity with a locale radio station because they were calling all people who had the name &#8220;Michael Schumacher&#8221; and they were asking them &#8220;<em>How hard does this affect your personal life? Has it ever affected you?<\/em>&#8220;. Once, I almost had an appointment canceled because someone thought I was mocking them, but that was the only incident&nbsp;ever.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never used it. I&#8217;ve never abused it. Nowadays, after the end of his professional racing career, it basically didn&#8217;t matter&nbsp;anymore.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>P: Any controversial theme you wish to be&nbsp;asked?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Like the fact that I would like to kill spammers? (Maintain several mailing lists, one forum, be a recipient for &#8220;<em>can we haz ads on gimp.org, plz?<\/em>&#8220;, and you&#8217;ll know what I&nbsp;mean)<\/p>\n<p><em>Simon: Not very&nbsp;controversial.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: What do you want to see in <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Feature-wise, I&#8217;m quite <span class=\"caps\">OK<\/span> with what <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> is right now. I have to admit that some of the current stuff in the <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> development version is still above my head &#8211; for example, I have no real concept yet of the difference between compositing and blending. Learning that it was 2 different things was quite useful. I hope that we can get the documentation of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> up-to-speed in&nbsp;time.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m more concerned about the project management. As in: how do we decide what new features go into <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>, how they get into <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>, and what <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> development will look like. Particularly post-2.10. You can see it yourself: Right now, our release cycles are much too long. Even the fact that we <em>have<\/em> actual release cycles is probably bad. If you have a look at services like Twitter or similar, they are constantly releasing. They just push new features out to the people and there is a constant review &#8220;<em>this is working, this is not working<\/em>&#8220;.  With our long release cycles, users get surprised by &#8220;<em>Oh this does not work as it used to. Why have they changed it?<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>The project is still a bit old-fashioned in regard to releases. We are trailing current development models. &#8220;Development models&#8221; is the term I use because I&#8217;m not sure how to refer to this. I&#8217;m intrigued by the idea of having stable branches with continuously added new features, but I&#8217;m not quite sure if I want 2.10 to be constantly evolving. I would prefer to have 2.12. That&#8217;s&nbsp;details.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: How do you see <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> in 20&nbsp;years?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> First thing: in 20 years, I&#8217;ll be 60 (laughs). So I&#8217;m not even sure how I see <em>myself<\/em> at that point.  I very much would like to still be part of the project in 20 years. I would still like to be able to see it as an image manipulation program. One of the major Free Software ones.  I have no idea at all what it will look like (laughs) because there is so much that can change.  Especially in the user interaction. How people interact with software might be the defining factor for how applications will look in 20&nbsp;years.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: What&#8217;s <strong>the<\/strong> feature you are really waiting&nbsp;for?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> The feature I&#8217;m really waiting for&#8230; It&#8217;s not a feature of painting or image manipulation. It&#8217;s about organization. This thing we want to do, Plug-in or Resource Registry 2.0. Properly built and really managed. The thing we talked so much about, have so many great ideas, but always seem to lack the time to do. This is the feature I would like to&nbsp;see. <\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: Do you contribute under&nbsp;influence?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Yeah, have a look at the 2.8.20 <span class=\"caps\">NEWS<\/span> file. At the typos, which I totally didn&#8217;t notice. So now I prefer to not contribute under&nbsp;influence.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Indeed you are now the maintainer of the 2.8 branch, or at least the releaser. If not mistaken, you took care of 2.8.18 and 2.8.20 releases. What can you say about&nbsp;this?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I guess I should start at why I am doing more 2.8 releases. As I explained before, I&#8217;m not interested in coding that much but more engaged in user support and maintenance. Approximately one month before the release of 2.8.18, we had received <a href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.gnome.org\/show_bug.cgi?id=767873\">a report about a security issue in the <span class=\"caps\">XCF<\/span> loading code<\/a>. It was fixed quickly, for both the development and 2.8 branches, but there was no plan to do a 2.8 release. We have instructions for this, and mitch replied &#8220;<em>Just do it!<\/em>&#8221; when I asked about&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p>It still felt like flying blind. Had I done the version changes &#8211; to 2.8.18, and afterwards advancing to 2.8.19 &#8211; correctly? Was the tarball made correctly? Would it build on any other system than mine? It did, but I had still missed two action: the release tag is supposed to be signed (i.e. <code>git tag -s<\/code>) and the <span class=\"caps\">GNOME<\/span> translations teams should be notified about planned releases with a string freeze be put in place until the release to make it easy for them to complete translations. 2.8.20 was much better prepared and even had an extra long string freeze. I had planned to do it in October 2016, but had to delay it to February 2017, during Wilber&nbsp;Week.<\/p>\n<p>Releasing is definitely something you want to do right, and this means taking a moment of uninterrupted time to do it. My approach towards bug handling has changed a bit, too. I pay much more attention to bugs with attached patches, and try to apply and test those (we really neglected to do this) in order to get them into a stable&nbsp;release.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>J: This was a good&nbsp;interview.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Thank you for doing&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is the second of a series of interviews of various people surrounding <span>GIMP<\/span> development and community. See also the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2017\/03\/01\/an-interview-with-michael-natterer-gimp-maintainer\/\">interview of Mitch, <span>GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;maintainer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span>GIMP<\/span> is made not only by hard-core developers but also through the hard work of many less technically-inclined contributors.<br \/>\nMichael Schumacher, <em>aka<\/em> Schumaml, is a great example of an important core contributor who has been with the project for over 10 years.  Mostly known as the project administrator, nowadays he takes care of everything but programming: administrative tasks, management, <span>PR<\/span>,&nbsp;support&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Schumaml was recently named the maintainer of the 2.8 branch, the stable version of <span>GIMP<\/span> which only receives bugfixes, showing that it does not require a developer to manage important roles&nbsp;successfully.<\/p>\n<p>This interview was held on Saturday, February 4, 2017, at about 12:27 <span>AM<\/span> in front of a fireplace and after a day of hacking at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2017\/01\/18\/wilberweek-2017-announced\/\">Wilber Week<\/a>. With us were several team members, including Debarshi Ray (Rishi (R)), &Oslash;yvind Kol&aring;s (pippin (P)) and Simon Budig who also asked&nbsp;questions.<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-interview-950w.jpg\" alt=\"Schumaml, the tie-bearing GIMP office manager\" width=\"950\" height=\"566\"><figcaption>\nSchumaml, <span>GIMP<\/span> administrator (<small>photo by antenne used by permission (<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\" title=\"Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International\">cba<\/a>)<\/small>)<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Jehan: Hello Michael. You are the <span>GIMP<\/span> administrator, at least that&rsquo;s what everybody&nbsp;says.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Schumaml:<\/strong> That&rsquo;s what everybody says,&nbsp;yes.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: How would you describe your contribution to the <span>GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;project?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I don&rsquo;t do much coding. It&rsquo;s just that so many people &mdash; from my perspective &mdash; do coding on <span>GIMP<\/span> already and have a better grasp of the source code and how it is made up. So I don&rsquo;t think I can contribute much in that regard. I try to do administrative stuff like handling the monetary aspect of the project such as telling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gnome.org\/\"><span>GNOME<\/span><\/a> that we need money for events like Wilber Week or for <span>LGM<\/span> reimbursements&hellip;<br \/>\nI also care about the <a href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.gnome.org\/page.cgi?id=browse.html&amp;product=GIMP\">bug reports<\/a> we have. I try to have them categorized, have a proper status, make sure that they get replies, and that we don&rsquo;t leave a bug report unattended for a long time.<br \/>\nAlso, I have administrative privileges on the <span>GIMP<\/span> web server, on mailing lists, and&hellip; what else. Do I forget anything? That&rsquo;s about it,&nbsp;yeah.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ve been called the tie-wearing <span>GIMP<\/span> office manager and I even got a t-shirt with a printed tie and a &ldquo;<span>TWOM<\/span>&rdquo; label, because I&rsquo;ve actually been wearing a proper shirt (made to measure) at one <span>GIMP<\/span> meeting during the <a href=\"http:\/\/libregraphicsmeeting.org\/2012\/\">Libre Graphics Meeting 2012<\/a> in&nbsp;Vienna.<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-twom-480x702.jpg\" alt=\"Schumaml, the tie-wearing GIMP office manager\" width=\"480\" height=\"702\"><figcaption>\nSchumaml, the tie-wearing <span>GIMP<\/span> office manager (<small><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/the_houz\/8663090451\/in\/album-72157633284677024\/\" title=\"Photo of Schumaml by houz\">photo by houz<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/\" title=\"Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International\">cba<\/a>)<\/small>).<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>J: How long have you been&nbsp;contributing?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I think I started <a href=\"https:\/\/git.gnome.org\/browse\/gimp\/commit\/?id=f7d599851c7fce5d289410cb568d515bcf737466\">somewhere between 2001 and 2004<\/a>. The first contributions were probably getting <span>GIMP<\/span> buildable on <span>MSYS<\/span>, the minimal <span>GNU<\/span> build system on the Windows platform. Because I was annoyed that there were only <span>GIMP<\/span> builds for releases and not for every commit in&nbsp;between.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Was it like nightly&nbsp;builds?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> No it was not like nightly builds. I just wanted to be able to have a current build <strong>for<\/strong> the <span>MS<\/span> Windows platform and also made <strong>on<\/strong> the <span>MS<\/span> Windows platform, so that I could build on my Windows system I was using at the time. Just to be able to follow <span>GIMP<\/span> development more closely than using a build someone made for a development&nbsp;release.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: So you mostly use <span>GIMP<\/span> on&nbsp;Windows?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Back more than 10 years ago, I did use Windows exclusively. So basically, back then I had done the porting of <span>GIMP<\/span> to the Windows&nbsp;platform.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Do you use <span>GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I use <span>GIMP<\/span>. Not as much as many other people but I use it to test many things of <span>GIMP<\/span> itself. I use it to edit photos I make. I don&rsquo;t publish many of the images because when I&rsquo;m editing them, I print them or I use them for some documentation work, so it goes to a customer. I even still use it on <span>MS<\/span> Windows, but now my main platform is&nbsp;Linux.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: What kind of job do you&nbsp;do?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I&rsquo;m working for a company that used to be a part of Siemens, which had been carved out by now. We are selling communication systems &#8211; in the past, you would have called these telephony systems. Nowadays this stuff is called &ldquo;Communication Enabled Business Processes&rdquo;, like everything which has to do with communication: calling someone or texting someone or exchanging chats or whatever. We are providing the software, the service, and the&nbsp;consulting.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Why do you contribute to <span>GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> It started due to pure selfishness: being able to have the most current <span>GIMP<\/span> available to&nbsp;me.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, a lot has changed: I believe in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gnu.org\/philosophy\/free-sw.en.html\">Free Software<\/a>. I believe software should be available for everyone for every purpose. <span>GIMP<\/span> is a Free Software project. Around the time I got hooked up with <span>GIMP<\/span>, I also got hooked up with Wikipedia, which follows the same approach towards knowledge. I feel like &mdash; yeah well &mdash; I&rsquo;m contributing to something that helps a lot of people all over the world. I think that&rsquo;s a good thing. <span>GIMP<\/span> happens to be the the first major project I contributed to, and I like it. It&rsquo;s also in-line with the topics I specialized in at university: image synthesis, image manipulation. It kind of seemed like a logical&nbsp;extension.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/schumaml-interview\/schumaml-lgm2014-800w.jpg\" alt=\"Schumaml, the tie-bearing GIMP office manager\" width=\"800\" height=\"459\"><figcaption><em>Not<\/em> the Formula One driver. (<small>Photo by Pat David (<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\" title=\"Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International\">cba<\/a>)<\/small>)<br \/>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>Rishi: What do you think of Michael&nbsp;Schumacher?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> (laughs) The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Schumacher\">formula one driver<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p><em>R:&nbsp;Yeah.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> First thing, you know about his current condition, like probably still in the coma. I hope that he will get better. He probably won&rsquo;t make it to his former self but at least to a state allowing him to live in a somewhat decent way.<br \/>\nHe got famous when I was in the so-called German &ldquo;Gymnasium&rdquo; (part of secondary education). It was a bit of an annoyance then &#8211;  I got the same nickname &#8211; &ldquo;Schumi&rdquo; &#8211; as he had. I didn&rsquo;t follow his career too closely, but knew about every race he won because I would be congratulated at&nbsp;school.<\/p>\n<p><em>pippin: Have you ever made use of sharing the&nbsp;name?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> No I haven&rsquo;t. It got me an interview opportunity with a locale radio station because they were calling all people who had the name &ldquo;Michael Schumacher&rdquo; and they were asking them &ldquo;<em>How hard does this affect your personal life? Has it ever affected you?<\/em>&ldquo;. Once, I almost had an appointment canceled because someone thought I was mocking them, but that was the only incident&nbsp;ever.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ve never used it. I&rsquo;ve never abused it. Nowadays, after the end of his professional racing career, it basically didn&rsquo;t matter&nbsp;anymore.<\/p>\n<p><em>P: Any controversial theme you wish to be&nbsp;asked?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Like the fact that I would like to kill spammers? (Maintain several mailing lists, one forum, be a recipient for &ldquo;<em>can we haz ads on gimp.org, plz?<\/em>&ldquo;, and you&rsquo;ll know what I&nbsp;mean)<\/p>\n<p><em>Simon: Not very&nbsp;controversial.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>J: What do you want to see in <span>GIMP<\/span>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Feature-wise, I&rsquo;m quite <span>OK<\/span> with what <span>GIMP<\/span> is right now. I have to admit that some of the current stuff in the <span>GIMP<\/span> development version is still above my head &#8211; for example, I have no real concept yet of the difference between compositing and blending. Learning that it was 2 different things was quite useful. I hope that we can get the documentation of <span>GIMP<\/span> up-to-speed in&nbsp;time.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m more concerned about the project management. As in: how do we decide what new features go into <span>GIMP<\/span>, how they get into <span>GIMP<\/span>, and what <span>GIMP<\/span> development will look like. Particularly post-2.10. You can see it yourself: Right now, our release cycles are much too long. Even the fact that we <em>have<\/em> actual release cycles is probably bad. If you have a look at services like Twitter or similar, they are constantly releasing. They just push new features out to the people and there is a constant review &ldquo;<em>this is working, this is not working<\/em>&ldquo;.  With our long release cycles, users get surprised by &ldquo;<em>Oh this does not work as it used to. Why have they changed it?<\/em>&ldquo;.<\/p>\n<p>The project is still a bit old-fashioned in regard to releases. We are trailing current development models. &ldquo;Development models&rdquo; is the term I use because I&rsquo;m not sure how to refer to this. I&rsquo;m intrigued by the idea of having stable branches with continuously added new features, but I&rsquo;m not quite sure if I want 2.10 to be constantly evolving. I would prefer to have 2.12. That&rsquo;s&nbsp;details.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: How do you see <span>GIMP<\/span> in 20&nbsp;years?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> First thing: in 20 years, I&rsquo;ll be 60 (laughs). So I&rsquo;m not even sure how I see <em>myself<\/em> at that point.  I very much would like to still be part of the project in 20 years. I would still like to be able to see it as an image manipulation program. One of the major Free Software ones.  I have no idea at all what it will look like (laughs) because there is so much that can change.  Especially in the user interaction. How people interact with software might be the defining factor for how applications will look in 20&nbsp;years.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: What&rsquo;s <strong>the<\/strong> feature you are really waiting&nbsp;for?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> The feature I&rsquo;m really waiting for&hellip; It&rsquo;s not a feature of painting or image manipulation. It&rsquo;s about organization. This thing we want to do, Plug-in or Resource Registry 2.0. Properly built and really managed. The thing we talked so much about, have so many great ideas, but always seem to lack the time to do. This is the feature I would like to&nbsp;see. <\/p>\n<p><em>J: Do you contribute under&nbsp;influence?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Yeah, have a look at the 2.8.20 <span>NEWS<\/span> file. At the typos, which I totally didn&rsquo;t notice. So now I prefer to not contribute under&nbsp;influence.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: Indeed you are now the maintainer of the 2.8 branch, or at least the releaser. If not mistaken, you took care of 2.8.18 and 2.8.20 releases. What can you say about&nbsp;this?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> I guess I should start at why I am doing more 2.8 releases. As I explained before, I&rsquo;m not interested in coding that much but more engaged in user support and maintenance. Approximately one month before the release of 2.8.18, we had received <a href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.gnome.org\/show_bug.cgi?id=767873\">a report about a security issue in the <span>XCF<\/span> loading code<\/a>. It was fixed quickly, for both the development and 2.8 branches, but there was no plan to do a 2.8 release. We have instructions for this, and mitch replied &ldquo;<em>Just do it!<\/em>&rdquo; when I asked about&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p>It still felt like flying blind. Had I done the version changes &#8211; to 2.8.18, and afterwards advancing to 2.8.19 &#8211; correctly? Was the tarball made correctly? Would it build on any other system than mine? It did, but I had still missed two action: the release tag is supposed to be signed (i.e. <code>git tag -s<\/code>) and the <span>GNOME<\/span> translations teams should be notified about planned releases with a string freeze be put in place until the release to make it easy for them to complete translations. 2.8.20 was much better prepared and even had an extra long string freeze. I had planned to do it in October 2016, but had to delay it to February 2017, during Wilber&nbsp;Week.<\/p>\n<p>Releasing is definitely something you want to do right, and this means taking a moment of uninterrupted time to do it. My approach towards bug handling has changed a bit, too. I pay much more attention to bugs with attached patches, and try to apply and test those (we really neglected to do this) in order to get them into a stable&nbsp;release.<\/p>\n<p><em>J: This was a good&nbsp;interview.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>S:<\/strong> Thank you for doing&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?p=4436\"> Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,6,44,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-floss","category-imaging","category-oss"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9jmWQ-19y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4705,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions\/4705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}