Thoughts on The GIMP

The GIMP
Originally uploaded by onewingedyaoi.

Mysteriously, I couldn't connect to the GIMP CVS repo today for my weekly sync. When I finally managed, I noticed a couple of cosmetic improvements (including very pretty new Tango-compliant icons), but is this the reason why the server was jammed (surely this wasn't going to make everybody rush out and upgrade, was it?).
I've read a lot of complaints about The GIMP, which tend to boil down to one of 2 things: Lack of Colour Management/CMYK/16-bit, and the interface. Personally, I really like the interface (once I merge the toolbox into the main window it barely takes up any screen space, and I prefer separate toolbox and image windows to traditional MDI), as must many other people (or it would change). I think most of the complaints in this area are really "It's not Photoshop", and I'm not really sure cloning Photoshop is the way to go (people are more adaptable than they are generally credited).
Of course, the colour issue is a bit more valid. Both the other major painting programs for Linux (Krita & CinePaint) have some form of CMS/CMYK/16-bit colour support, and it would really be nice if this work could make it's way back to GIMP (preferably Krita's stuff - it's much more advanced and less buggy). CVS GIMP does have rudimentary CMS support, but there is no support for CMYK ouside of a 3rd party plugin providing 1-way CMYK TIFF export, and no 16 bit colour support at all (AFAIK).