Comparison of two Free Open Source software from an application development perspective

I have chosen two different free and open source projects, for comparison. I am going to analyze them from development perspective.

GIMP - GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

I have analyzed GIMP few months ago, and explained what is possible to achieve with this great tool. But let's look from a different perspective. How about analyzing the whole development process.

So how the GIMP is developed. GIMP is primarily developed by volunteers, because code is open it is fairly easy for everyone to develop for it (with programming skills of-course). GIMP is also participating in Google Summer of Code event every year.

Everyone can make changes by taking a bug from the buglist and submitting it later as patch. Here is an explanation about how to submit a patch.

There are few things that you need to know first:

• Developers website - Main developers website. First place to go.
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• Bugs - As always there are bugs. Here is the list of all the current bugs, and explains how to use BugZilla system for navigating through the list


• Source Code repository - Here is the place to get, or browse the source code.


• FAQ for developers

Blender - Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems.

It is great tool. I have used it few times, but always get stuck with the user interface, but it might change once version 2.5 of Blender is finally released (with simplifier user interface). But the software has become really powerful, and is growing constantly, with more users and new features.

Just a sample, of what it can do:



And all is free!

But let's get started with comparison.

It seems to me that development process it the same as for GIMP. There is a bug list. After the bug is fixed, the developer can submit a patch request using this guide.
Blender is also participating in Google Summer of Code event every year.

• Developers website - Main developers website. First place to go.


• Bugtracker - The bugtracker for searching/adding new bug reports


• Source code repository - Here is the place to get, or browse the source code.

It seems to me that development for these projects is done essentially in the same way. I really couldn't find any difference :)