My guess is someone needed it at some point, and jumped through the hoops to get it approved. It has no ongoing cost, so even if it takes staff time to review and set it up in the repository, it would easily pay for itself from not having a subscription. But it would rely on having staff with previous experience to not lose your gains through lost time learning.
You’re lucky to have IT even know what GIMP is, much less have it officially approved.
Every place I’ve been at was like “what’s that?”
My guess is someone needed it at some point, and jumped through the hoops to get it approved. It has no ongoing cost, so even if it takes staff time to review and set it up in the repository, it would easily pay for itself from not having a subscription. But it would rely on having staff with previous experience to not lose your gains through lost time learning.