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Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

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Re: Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

#2
Yes! This is by far the number one program I've missed since I left Windows years ago. GIMP is so unfriendly, krita is for drawing, pinta is a very shallow clone that only just stopped crashing a few months ago. Paint.net is just better in every way.

Re: Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

#5
Paint.net was originally MIT licensed but the author closed its source because people did not give him credit. Note: The MIT license does not require credit.

https://blog.paint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of...

Paint.net likely still benefits from the announcement of "Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint" long after switching to a proprietary license, which I find more dubious than using MIT-licensed code without giving credit to the author.

Also I rather doubt a "clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D" can be "written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible"?

Re: Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

#6
post #5

Paint.net was originally MIT licensed but the author closed its source because people did not give him credit. Note: The MIT license does not require credit. https://blog.paint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of... Paint.net likely still benefits from the announcement of "Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint" long after switching to a proprietary license, which I find more dubious than using MIT-licensed…

> Note: The MIT license does not require credit.

The MIT notice starts with “Copyright (c) ”, and who uses the code must include that line in any derived work.

> Also I rather doubt

Do you doubt Claude's rewrite can be defined as “clean room” (I also do)? Or that Claude is able to rewrite it? Or that it would not have been possible otherwise?

Re: Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

#7
Paint.net used to be an open source collaboration project by Rick Brewster, a Microsoft Employee and the students at the University of Washington. Today it is a private closed source project accepting donations, and still headed by Rick Brewster.

Re: Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

#9
The full thread[0] about how it runs on Wine is quite interesting:

> Direct2D has always been the biggest hurdle for Paint.NET on WINE, and it's clear that it will never be completed enough for Paint.NET's use. And I can't just "disable" the use of Direct2D. So, instead, Paint.NET now has an internal, from-scratch, clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D that it uses on WINE (triggered by using /wine). It lives in PaintDotNet.Windows.Direct2D1.Managed.dll. This was written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible and would NEVER have happened.

> Most of this code is, as they say, "vibe coded." By that I mean that it has not been thoroughly reviewed, it's more "trust me bro" style. I cannot possibly review 180,000 lines of code, it's just way way way too much. For reference, the rest of Paint.NET is about 700,000 lines of code and I've been working on it for over 20 years. I did thoroughly review any code that had to be changed or added elsewhere in the Paint.NET code base (refactoring and integration points, etc.). Over time I do hope that more of this code will be vetted by real humans and also by more advanced AI models.

[0]: https://forums.paint.net/topic/134563-%F0%9F%8D%B7-extremely...

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