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To followup on that idea: pick a particular segment of the graphic arts industry and find what Photoshop features they use that GIMP is good enough at. Then write the manual targeted to them that explains how to use just those features. Also if you change the GIMP UI (god, I hate that thing!) so it's optimized for those tasks, I'm sure you could sell it for at least 1/2 what Photoshop costs.

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Yes, maybe you could sell one or two or maybe a hundred copies but hardly any more.

The more successful your fork, the more likely it's going to be packaged and distributed by the one of the top distributions for FREE. The higher your sales price, the more likely people will buy just one copy and share additional copies among themselves.

Now consider the costs: Changing the UI of GIMP seems to be no easy task, otherwise someone would have done it, already. People are complaing about the interface for the last ten years or so.

In other words: Yes, you may be able to make revenue by adding features to the GIMP, but you're unlikely to make a profit!

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