Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have seen it. My question is if RT dies out will ART follow shortly afterward? It’s my understanding that ART is somewhat of a fork of RT. Hopefully I understand that correctly. I do like the more complex options that RT provides, but I should give ART a go at some point.
@Rick :
ART can exist without RawTherapee if it might come to that. One thing that might need to be brought over from RT to ART are parts of RawPedia.
At a certain point @agriggio decided to fork and create a derivative of RawTherapee. It is, to my knowledge, basically a one man show, but it is rather actively maintained/developed (I see commits coming by at a rather regular basis).
Maybe @agriggio can shed some light on how much, if any, cross-pollination is going between the two.
We have backported some things, Alberto has perhaps taken some DCP’s from us, but otherwise, there is no collaboration as far as I am aware.
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I talk to @heckflosse and we share ideas and code when there is the chance. Apart from that, I am happy if the RT devs take whatever they see fit, and similarly I’m not afraid to “steal” code from RT.
That said, it is true that the two projects are at this point completely independent and there’s no plan to keep them in sync.
Hope this clarifies
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I have pointed people to ART when they ask me what is up with RT. I also remind them ART is RT for Alberto. 
(Thanks for sharing your fork anyway. 
)
I forgot to add: I welcome any kind of contribution, and there are a number of people who regularly do that (e.g. @srgmro, @paulmatth and others for translations, @Hombre for code, @gaaned92 for Windows builds, and many more for bug reports and suggestions)
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Look, I understand why it happens, I do not want to discourage people from trying something else, and I like Alberto’s work a lot. But I find it moderately annoying that every time an issue with RT comes up, people see that as an opportunity to openly advertise ART. This does not help in the slightest to keep the RT project active, it might even do the opposite and help propagate the idea that it is getting old and dead and you’d better look elsewhere to satisfy your needs.
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Where’s a link to ART? I’d like to check it out. Thanks.
Don’t fret. It isn’t a competition. I only recommend it to people who want to quit pursuing RT. The referral to ART is letting the apple fall closer to the tree, so when RT is back to its normal releasing self, these people will go back to it, hopefully.
It has its own section in the forum. Take a look there. 
That was certainly not my intention, sorry. I merely replied to a direct request for clarification. In fact, I agree that it is at least curious that when people ask a question about tool X they often get “you should use Y instead” as an answer, regardless of the actual question…
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Hello, I only reacted to this quote by @Rick. If he prefers the layout and features of RT over Darktable, then I suggest to have a look at Art, as the layout is practical similar and many of the features of RT are still there.
This was not an attempt to “lurk users away from RT”, as I’m not in the business of “growing market share” at all, why should I? One grabs the tool that works, be it RT, DT, Art or dcraw or whatever.
Btw, I worked many years on the RT project: documentation (the first manual for v3.0), translation (Dutch), testing, bug reporting, spam cop for the then RT forum, helping users out, etc, and I still have the latest dev release on my pc so I keep an eye on what’s going on (or !on ). So not a single intention to discourage people to use RawTherapee.
RawTherapee is absolutely the best RAW editor I’ve tried till now (even with 5.8 version released quite long ago) and it is worrisome to see the stagnation in the development, especially after trying some nightly builds and experiencing their mightiness. I was wondering: would encouraging a donation to specifically RT development improve the situation ?
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@paulmatth and @agriggio I know you both have been valuable members of the dev team and don’t doubt your good intentions We are all still friends here, not part of some competition as @afre puts it.
You are generous to consider donations. My personal view is that it will not help - unless, maybe the donation is on the scale of a month’s salary
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Time to consider a multi pronged kitchen utensil?
As a humble car mechanic I hardly can imagine myself supporting a software developer… But I’d gladly donate what I can for the cause.
We are waiting for the maintainer, not donations per se. Anyway, I am glad this discussion has been constructive. There is always the temptation to do the opposite.
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RT works wonderfully, even the 2 year old version. It is a great asset to the opensource world and it would be wonderful if RT remained.
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Photography and image development is great fun for me for over 55 years now… When changing to raw in 2016 I had a look at some raw editors and stuck with RT because it is great. I can’t imagine to work without it. Thanks to all who are involved in the dev. Although coming from IT business I am no developer or maintainer. So the only possible help from my side is to encourage the developers to keep RT alive (wish I could do more). Currently the dev versions are fine for me, don’t need a release, although I know that it is vital for such an excellent software.
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