I think GIMP could become a big proper competitor to commercial photo editors just like Blender did on the 3D space, as soon as they go the Blender way and do a complete overhaul of the UX/UI like Blender did.

I remember, for years and years, trying Blender and quitting it due to the terrible UX choices. Likewise, I also remember the devs and some older users on the internet trying, at every turn, to tell us how much superior Blender UI/UX was, that all the people were wrong and they were right. They weren't right, of course. Then the team at Blender finally accepted it, they did a complete redo of the UX/UI and now Blender is winning prizes at the Oscars.

The same could happen to GIMP if they just accepted the UX is terrible.

I'm saying this, totally agreeing that these devs did a fantastic job and that they don't owe us anything. This is open source, of course. But, this level of stubbornness, is preventing GIMP from being used by a lot more people that want to finally ditch Photoshop.