This was an interesting thread - although I admit I only skimmed it.

I didn't see a lot of direct answers to this question though --- what is Krita's reason for being?   What will differentiate it from things like Gimp or MyPaint

5 years ago, there were a lot of gaps in the Gimp, and Krita seemed targeted to fill those gaps.

From my position on the outside, it really looks to me like the Gimp is gonna fill 'em itself before Krita 2 is stable enough to be used...  The Gimp already has relatively decent colour space support, and it sounds like higher bit depth support is coming down the pipes. 

Maybe it won't have quite as flexible a brush model as Krita --- but is that a sufficient differentiator?

I'd be curious as to what people think the 'mission statement' for Krita ought to be.

Or maybe that was already established and I missed it in my skim of the thread...

Warren