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Names matter a ton. I would never recommend a product called "Gimp" in a professional environment. The fact that the GIMP team has heard this feedback for mult

Names matter a ton. I would never recommend a product called "Gimp" in a professional environment. The fact that the GIMP team has heard this feedback for multiple decades and ignored it says a lot - both about their ability to take community feedback and about how much they care about ever being a professional tool. There are two tools: BoringThing and Ninja Sex Death Cult. They both accomplish the same task, but I can recommend one to friends and family without immediately having to explain the name. So I'll use and recommend BoringThing.

rzzzt 2y ago
The justification is present in the FAQ: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-gimp-will-you-change-it https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-... This is very much the same notion that comes up whenever CockroachDB is mentioned. IIRC at one point they had a "white-label" project generator where you could come up with your own name and branding, and it would bake it into the checked out sources. It might make sense to create one for the photo editor as well. Edit: Ninja Sex Death Cult is a pretty good band name though!
- stephen_g 2y ago
  Why would the name ‘CockroachDB’ be an issue? Cockroaches are just insects, but the word ‘gimp’ is actually a slur in some cultures (Cambridge dictionary labels the first definitions from both the US and UK as “informal offensive”). So I think it is worth changing the name in this case. Actually being a slur is a problem, in stark contrast to another recent example, where as far as I can see the reasons around changing Git’s ‘master’ branch name are totally artificial - the word ‘master’ is of course not a slur, and despite claims that it necessarily invokes the idea of slavery, it clearly has a multitude of uses that have nothing to do with slavery, such as ‘master recording’ or ‘masters degree’ so the idea that the word by itself is ‘not inclusive’ is quite baseless in my opinion. So being a slur is a real problem in a way that being the name of a slightly unpleasant insect (like CockroachDB) or hypothetically (but not really) invoking the idea of slavery really shouldn’t be.
  - rzzzt 2y ago
    'Git' itself also swaps between being an OK and a controversial project name from time to time. I don't really have an argument, I'll just point to this search result page and you can dive deep into the lore if you'd like to (mentions of GIMP will also appear in some threads): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cockroachdb%20%22name%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

rzzzt 2y ago

The justification is present in the FAQ: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-gimp-will-you-change-it https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-... This is very much the same notion that comes up whenever CockroachDB is mentioned. IIRC at one point they had a "white-label" project generator where you could come up with your own name and branding, and it would bake it into the checked out sources. It might make sense to create one for the photo editor as well. Edit: Ninja Sex Death Cult is a pretty good band name though!

stephen_g 2y ago
Why would the name ‘CockroachDB’ be an issue? Cockroaches are just insects, but the word ‘gimp’ is actually a slur in some cultures (Cambridge dictionary labels the first definitions from both the US and UK as “informal offensive”). So I think it is worth changing the name in this case. Actually being a slur is a problem, in stark contrast to another recent example, where as far as I can see the reasons around changing Git’s ‘master’ branch name are totally artificial - the word ‘master’ is of course not a slur, and despite claims that it necessarily invokes the idea of slavery, it clearly has a multitude of uses that have nothing to do with slavery, such as ‘master recording’ or ‘masters degree’ so the idea that the word by itself is ‘not inclusive’ is quite baseless in my opinion. So being a slur is a real problem in a way that being the name of a slightly unpleasant insect (like CockroachDB) or hypothetically (but not really) invoking the idea of slavery really shouldn’t be.
- rzzzt 2y ago
  'Git' itself also swaps between being an OK and a controversial project name from time to time. I don't really have an argument, I'll just point to this search result page and you can dive deep into the lore if you'd like to (mentions of GIMP will also appear in some threads): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cockroachdb%20%22name%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...