GIMP Animated GIF

I was just wondering if there was a good animated GIF generation tool for Linux, particularly Gnome, and thought that there was a possibility that GIMP may provide a means to animate GIF images. Sure enough, GIMP does allow you to create animated GIF images through its multi layer capabilities.

As long as you adhere to open file standards I have found that, over the past 3 years, I've had less trouble with all our home PCs running Linux that I had during the decade previous to that when they were running MS Windows. If you want an application you just search the gentoo repository and download it for free, then periodically you run a one line command to upgrade all the applications on your PC in one, system wide, upgrade. It's so easy. I can't imagine ever running any closed source applications, on our home PCs at least, ever again. The only applications which are problematic are Firefox plugins for Java and Macromedia Flash since they're not Free Open Source Software but still essential for interaction with a few web sites.

I can't understand why anyone uses Flash since it would be entirely possible to accomplish the same effects using Javascript and animated GIF images and the content download would be only slightly larger, even less so if the web server compressed the content on the fly. Perhaps I'm just becomming too spoiled by broadband.

Why do firms marry themselves to closed standards?