GIMP is not competitive with Adobe Photoshop from a capabilities or user experience perspective.
Here’s a non-biased article comparing GIMP to Photoshop: https://thegimptutorials.com/gimp-vs-photoshop/
Also blender was regularly used to make content with input from the community. Multiple shorts that dog fooded it and provided improvements through the process, while inspiring many to see what’s possible.
GIMP doesn’t have any of that. Photoshop can be had now for $10/mo or something cheap like that. It’s not thousands of dollars a year like for DCCs. It doesn’t have productions driving features in it , or creating content regularly to inspire people.
Krita does better here because they do small but more engaged community outreach to create content with Krita and have it feed back into the app
The Blender Foundation and community made that happen! No glib “if you don’t like it, fix it!” type comments. I’m not suggesting that you personally have said that, but look at the context and process of Blender’s development and success. The people at the Foundation, along with a buoyant community have worked hard and listened to the criticisms and transparently worked on them. It’s been a long slog.
They’re not only developing it, they’re trying it in actual productions and using that to improve it
> The Fuzzy Select tool in GIMP took about 20 seconds to decide what I had clicked on and isolate it for me
That's uncommon enough to be an isolated incident.