I wasn't a big fan of GNU initiatives, and even less of 'viral licenses', until I encountered Public Money, Public Code. The more you think about it, the more fucked up it appears to you that governments pay for Windows/365/AWS licenses, using your tax money, because decision makers haven't got the slightest clue about FLOSS, and if they do, they mostly don't have the nutsack to implement the sweeping changes that would be necessary to migrate.

You're right that Photoshop has features incorporated into it which GIMP doesn't. It's worth remembering though that although GIMP follows the unix philosophy of not trying to do everything it does do a lot to interoperate with other software. For example, if I want to open a RAW file directly from GIMP, it launches Rawtherapee or Darktable for me, which processes the file and then opens it in GIMP, much the same as an Adobe workflow but more visibly two separate programs working together. And of course there are G'MIC, Batcher and Resynthsizer but they do need to be installed manually as plugins, which is not ideal for newcomers.

I think a big game-changer for some users is going to be the upcoming release of 'Link Layers'. You'll be able to have a layer in your GIMP project which is linked to an external file. So for example you could have a layer in your GIMP project which you are editing Krita.

I'm sure a lot will depend on what you're working on but in my workplace the only thing really holding us back from switching to GIMP is setting correct scaling and position for printing on rolls on Windows 11. If I could get my boss to switch to Linux (probably even more amibitious) we would be done with Adobe.

because no soldier is an IT literate and 99.9% of those people are used to ms office + every document template (which are many) would be easier to work with.

of courSSe you are

They contributed code that they needed, that is not giving back. I am speaking about actual long-term maintenance and/or money, which isn't mentioned anywhere.

See, the problem with these code contributions is that they are just that: One time effort. In most cases, this code will be handed over to the core maintainers, who will then have to deal with it for the rest of the project's lifecycle. There are many documented instances in which FOSS projects are actually suffering because of contributions like this, as they are struggling to maintain the added features long term.

But all the people downvoting this care about is that a public money drain like the military writes some code and throws it into the faces of FOSS developers, even completely disregarding whether these improvements are actually relevant for the everyday user of the software. And again, by contributing I am referring to actually funding the project with significant amounts. We are speaking of a public entity that spends multiple millions on a single fighter jet.