GIMP 2.6 will probably out in August. Gimpusers.com wrote an article about the most important new features.

Again, many really good things are included. Absolutely interesting and promising. But when will they finally add full CMYK support? It is so important for anyone who works as a graphic-designer and/or in the printing-department. I wonder why it ain't included yet.

I know it's not exactly what you're looking for but maybe this helps a bit: http://cue.yellowmagic.info/softwares/separate.html

CMYK isn't very useful in the computer world, as almost everything displaying the images is RGB-based. Professional printing/photography, yes, but the computer world - not so much.

There's a semi-decent post on this issue from a Scribus developer here.

Actually I don't care if computers work mainly with RGB. I and many other people need - in order to print images in the newspaper - full CMYK support as newspaper-print-machines work only in CMYK mode. Sure, for the home-stuff RGB is more than enough but if you want your company to switch to Linux/OSS, the Linux software simply has to offer a real solution/alternative to a companys needs. I do not really blame the developers for not having CMYK support included yet, as I guess that it is really difficult to offer a proper CMYK-mode. I simply state that many customers will refuse to implement OSS because of the lack of some essential tools that are common in e.g. Windows or Apple software.

More options/tools = more acceptance = more users switching to Linux.

Yes, but it doesn't matter if you care. The fact is they do, and GIMP wasn't originally created to be aimed at professionals - it was aimed at the hobbyist Linux user.
You're "many other people" are a small portion of GIMP's audience, really. GIMP was never intended as a competitor/replacement for Photoshop - people have made it out to be.
You may not blame them, but you are certainly criticizing them for it. Did you read the link I posted? Properly testing CMYK support is NOT CHEAP. Maybe if someone is so darned keen about GIMP having CMYK support, they'll be kind enough to donate the necessary hardware for them to test it on.

CMYK support = time + money for hardware
GIMP = time, but no income
....

I read the link you posted. Yes. I now that GIMP was initially aimed at the hobbyist (or may even be so). I have the feeling that you fail to see the point I am trying to make: Linux won't be mass-accepted on many many production machines as long as the software available for it is not up to the tasks that todays businesses require. And as long as it won't be used in masses by standard companies, it won't really become a common OS for the average computer user.

I can imagine that it is hard and expensive to create a proper CMYK support. But - the same thing is true for virtualisation support, professional video-editing, creating a video-conferencing-application and many many more things. Yet they got done.

I do not say that the GIMP devs themselves have/had to include CMYK support. It would have been/be more than sufficient if some company would help/have helped them developing this "little thing" for GIMP - even if they would market it later as as separate "Gimp Pro" version for a few bucks. It would have a nice impact for making Linux more mainstream. CMYK support could be a part of GIMP since several years - if someone/some company would have cared.

Where would OpenOffice be without the devs from Sun? How good would virtualization work without the RedHat devs? Sometimes it needs some company to push an application IMHO.

While I understand your point, it's not a point I personally care about. I don't think Linux needs to have mass acceptance - I'm fine with the way it is. People can use whatever OS they like, or does the job for them (I spend about 80% of my time on OS X).

All these things you've mentioned can be tested out on relatively inexpensive hardware, save for driver support (and we know how driver support happens in Linux - someone donates hardware or specs to a dev, or the dev has the hardware for personal use). To do any testing of CMYK support, you really need to have a high quality printer, which can range into the thousands. Don't get me wrong, if the GIMP dev's get CMYK support in there I'm all for it, but until then I'll leave 'em to do their thing. It's worked out so far...considering the only real criticism of GIMP features (ignoring UI complaints - just straight abilities) is the lack of CMYK, I think that's a good sign

I definitely agree with you on that one.

The developers know about it. Implementing CMYK in the old GIMP code base (pre GEGL) was too difficult/problematic/complicated/impossible/yucky (pick a few).

Now they have GEGL, CMYK is possible. It's finally going to happen.

http://archives.free.net.ph/message/200806...4d59.pt-BR.html

I dont think this is useful, but it might be interesting: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIMP