I actually use it. I don't mind the keybindings, they make more sense than Photoshop's or Krita's to me. The complains are from people that want Photoshop for free and Gimp is not that.

>> most people, most of the time, complain about things they have no direct knowledge of nor a hand in making

I certainly see it very differently, or I would not lose time here. Indeed here is full of makers and doers. People that did things, open source, or founded a company, or something else. Also lots of knowledgeable people. Of course, is some share of charlatans, specially in medical topics, is a show… but in general I do learn here.

I think you can “criticize” if you are not contributing, but form is important. One thing is to say “I don’t like it, you shouldn’t use it” another is “I use it, and I would love feature XY”

I use it almost daily in website content creation. Sure there are quirks, but it's a completely free image editor that can do nearly everything I need. No complaints from me.

I made gimp tutorials in spanish, courses for teachers and demos, twenty years ago. Also Sodipodi an Audacity. I have been downvoted, but there are not enough downvoted that make me change the comments I heard and read for this year's: keybindings and CMYK and pantone, these two last from people who will never paper printed their designs.