Wikipedia says Photoshop has its origin in code from University of Michigan written around 1987 wheras GIMP was started as a student project at UCB around 1994. That gives it a 7 year head start.
I'm not sure I see your point with the age thing. Is it relevant whether or not an open source project of a given age is better than a proprietary one of the same age? The economics of proprietary software ensure that there will generally be older versions in nearly every niche (especially consumer facing).
Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's basically infinity in the software industry.
Is it relevant whether or not an open source project of a given age
is better than a proprietary one of the same age?
We all know initial conditions are very important. Once a community
adapts to the rules of a given open source or proprietary application
it rarely decides to change even when the alternative may be superior
in some way.
Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's
basically infinity in the software industry.
GIMP is already superior to Photoshop in at least one significant way:
you can give copies of it to your family, friends, students or whoever
without breaking any laws. Of course if you're a design pro who uses
Photoshop because it has features GIMP lacks then that may not matter
to you.
However both those topics are besides the point. My main issue with
your essay lies in the statement
It’s obvious that up to this point, proprietary software has created
a vibrant ecosystem and immense profits that probably would not have
existed were all software open source.
That's not at all obvious. What is obvious to me is that some
proprietary companies have made obscene profits by preventing fair
competition to keep prices artificially high and stop people from
switching to lower cost or free alternatives.
"What is obvious to me is that some proprietary companies have made obscene profits by preventing fair competition to keep prices artificially high and stop people from switching to lower cost or free alternatives."
Vendor lock-in is not new, and not exclusive to software by any means. It's an ages old tactic, and one that's been considered fair game forever. A corporation out to make profits is foolish to not use it where possible.
You can't ever stop someone from switching to cheaper or free alternatives. You can only make your product so good (if only through legacy support) that the cost of switching is higher than the cost of buying your product. This, again, is neither new nor unfair.
Abusing near-monopolies (which MS did) is unfair, but has nothing to do with proprietary vs. free. It's perfectly possible to have proprietary software without that. It's like the difference between drinking sensibly and drinking and driving.
You may personally think vendor lock-in is a fair tactic but if you bother to do a little research you'll find some significant court decisions opposing that view (including the one against MS).
Still, I'm a little confused that you see no relationship between monopolies and licensing given that MS was convicted of abusing its monopoly to dictate licensing terms to OEMs.
I'm certainly not saying that Microsoft played entirely by the books. They clearly didn't. They went well beyond standard vendor lock-in. Things like lock-in that are considered fair game in a competitive market are not when a monopoly is involved.
I just don't think it's fair to blame proprietary software for Microsoft's sins.
Microsoft is not the only sinner, they are just the most publicized one. The profit made by Microsoft and the others in the Software Top 100 - http://www.softwaretop100.org/list.php?page=1 is probably several times higher than it would be if not for lock-in and other anti-competitive practices. Those unfair profits are effectively a hardware tax which transfer wealth away from the consumers and businesses who would have presumably spent it on their own interests.
