By 'almost useless' you mean 'almost useless to someone expecting an open source clone of the leading proprietary software'.
We all too often look at open source software and think of it as a clone of an 'equivalent'. Journalists and others lead us to believe that the likes of the GIMP team are striving to create a clone of Photoshop, or that the Inkscape team are striving to create a version of Illustrator or that the OpenOffice team are playing catchup with Microsoft Office.
If you are a developer with basic image manipulation needs and some specific needs such as being able to save files to a specific colour depth in a specific format, then GIMP is what you want. Admittedly you are not going to be able to do the things a designer does in Photoshop but that is not the point.
Same with OpenOffice Calc, it is a spreadsheet program but not a clone of Excel. It has a different demographic of users, some of whom would consider Excel to be the wrong tool as it magically autocorrects and thinks it knows best, with an interface that obfuscates important (to the programmer) details file save options.
Inkscape - the alleged open source clone of Illustrator is not that at all. It is an editor for SVG files and is a better tool than Illustrator for that specific task of creating optimised SVG files. You can do some design with it too, but it has technical applications and a user base that prefer it because it caters to their needs.
Some people that are used to the market leading software come with preconceptions about what free and open source software is about and how the user interfaces should be improved. Meanwhile, long time users of the open source software, can be mightily relieved that their chosen software is different to what the majority thinks is better.
We all too often look at open source software and think of it as a clone of an 'equivalent'. Journalists and others lead us to believe that the likes of the GIMP team are striving to create a clone of Photoshop, or that the Inkscape team are striving to create a version of Illustrator or that the OpenOffice team are playing catchup with Microsoft Office.
If you are a developer with basic image manipulation needs and some specific needs such as being able to save files to a specific colour depth in a specific format, then GIMP is what you want. Admittedly you are not going to be able to do the things a designer does in Photoshop but that is not the point.
Same with OpenOffice Calc, it is a spreadsheet program but not a clone of Excel. It has a different demographic of users, some of whom would consider Excel to be the wrong tool as it magically autocorrects and thinks it knows best, with an interface that obfuscates important (to the programmer) details file save options.
Inkscape - the alleged open source clone of Illustrator is not that at all. It is an editor for SVG files and is a better tool than Illustrator for that specific task of creating optimised SVG files. You can do some design with it too, but it has technical applications and a user base that prefer it because it caters to their needs.
Some people that are used to the market leading software come with preconceptions about what free and open source software is about and how the user interfaces should be improved. Meanwhile, long time users of the open source software, can be mightily relieved that their chosen software is different to what the majority thinks is better.