I realize the decision needed to be made, but disagree that it had to be
between OO or the GIMP. They could have removed Mono which would have
removed F-spot which has had a bug in it for 2 years that has not been
fixed. It overwrites EXIF metadata and makes it useless as an organizer
which is what it basically is and it is already a poor photo editor. It
also would scrap Tomboy but you could replace it with Gnote.

Removing Mono would also serve the purpose of reassuring enterprise users
that they do not have Microsoft looking over their shoulder and place
Canonical on equal footing with Novell without signing a protection pact
with Microsoft. Including the GIMP on CD would be helpful for people not on
broadband.

The strangest decision of all is to include PiTiVi. This came out of
nowhere. It is not even mentioned on Brainstorm the platform that Ubuntu
supposedly consults since they set it up for that purpose. This is probably
due to Shuttleworth's Mac envy since the Mac comes with a video editor. But
the Mac is distributed on a DVD and Ubuntu is not. Plus, PiTiVi is still
plagued with bugs and is not ready for such a high profile. It could come
back and hurt Ubuntu when users are dissatisfied. It would be better to wait
until it is up to the job and to wait until there is a demand.

I would love to see the download stats for PiTiVi vs. the GIMP.