Follow industry “standards” that have existed for literally 3 decades.

And yes, when a piece of software dominates it’s particular industry as much as Photoshop does, it is considered a standard.

And to be clear, GIMP is just one of many such pieces of software that quite frankly are awful from a users perspective. Some will claim that “oh well it’s simply because it’s new software” but it’s far, far more than that and it shows a complete disconnect between those who write the software and those who use the software.

I find it curious that a way better alternative to GIMP is the browser-based Photopea which is partially open source. It doesn’t have the speed for heavy work because it runs in your browser, but because it mirrora Photoshop, it’s workflow is far more natural to someone who edits photos for a living. Doing a quick search it looks like a single person worked on Photopea, while almost 100 people over many more years have been working on GIMP. One is typical open source software - a bunch of people trying to learn a bit of programming, trying to flex their skills but clearly not actual graphic artist.