5 ms·

Will continue to say it, this piece of software that could be a mainstream huge deal, a straight-up Adobe killer, will never do this unless it changes its name.

by jrm4 2y ago

Will continue to say it, this piece of software that could be a mainstream huge deal, a straight-up Adobe killer, will never do this unless it changes its name. I've mostly given up hope on this, but it's still wild that people who work on the software just seem to very stubbornly not understand this. Whether you want to blame it on ableism, or perhaps simply "you should name your software after something/someone skilled or professional, not literally the opposite," you're preventing people like me (IT teaching, a go-between between techies and non-techies) from being able to recommend it. Luckily, Krita's here and for better or worse does the AI stuff.

hackthemack 2y ago
I think they should just rename it as IMP. The gnu is implied. Richard Stallman might complain it should always be called Gnu IMP (New Imp), which is fine.
shmerl 2y ago
It's not about the name it's about pace of development. It's extremely slow since they don't see a need for more backing like let's say Blender.
veggieroll 2y ago
That's probably true. But offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor is a pretty common old-school hacker goal. It serves a valuable community function by protecting the community from corporate interests, non-technical bike-shedding, and overload by "bug" reports that are actually just the user not being technical enough to use the tool properly. Edit: Also FWIW, I've had no problem introducing GIMP to church groups and in various professional settings. Double edit: since you mention schools, I should also add that I taught my wife GIMP and she had no problem sharing it in her school (US public high school).
- CharlesW 2y ago
  > But offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor… Some folks who are neither prudish or humorless want to see the project and its contributors succeed to the degree that alternatives like Photopea has, or as Blender has in the 3D space. The project will continue to limp along until the name is changed to something without negative connotations in English-speaking populations.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    You can fork it, rename to something like "Glimpse" and see the adoption skyrocket. Surely the success is just around the corner. Oh wait a minute
    - gkbrk 2y ago
      Hey don't be unfair to them, they also tried to collect donations for changing the name.
    - CharlesW 2y ago
      Point taken — the name is just one of many issues between GIMP and Blender-like success. But there are also open source projects like Inkscape, which enjoyed success in part because of a rechristening that eliminated the headwinds of previous bad names.
- troyvit 2y ago
  > offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor is a pretty common old-school hacker goal I agree, and to an extent laud it, but it also means keeping GIMP an old-school hacker project.
DonnieBurger 2y ago
I'd argue that GIMP reclaimed the word for a better meaning. Consider how the word lame has lost its derogatory impact. Googling "gimp" gives me only results about the program. Changing the name now would dilute decades of brand recognition and confuse users, especially those in non-English communities.
- monetus 2y ago
  I think the sunk cost into branding is the right take here; my 2¢. Gimp is still niche, and will never be used the same way people say Photoshop when referring to any general photo editing. It will take quite a few more years of transient language and lots of success for that unrealistic outcome.
enriquto 2y ago
> his piece of software (...) will never do this unless it changes its name. Why? Honestly, why? As a non-native English speaker (like the vast majority of people in this planet), the word "gimp" to me means "the free software image processing program". If I search google, duckduckgo, bing, whatever, the entire first page of results refers to that very program. Digging deeper, I start to find some references to the Pulp Fiction movie, where a minor character is named like that. I remember that character, but in my language it was called by a different name. Is that all? Is there any other meaning to this word? If so, it must be so obscure as to be completely irrelevant. Please, take into account that most English speakers are not native speakers, and many words will have a different meaning to us. English as a lingua franca may be comfortable to native speakers, but it also means that it's no longer yours. The name of the program does not seem to be a serious issue for its adoption. Now, if you want to talk about its user interface... I don't think it does, either (but I may be open to discussion). I have taught my kids to do simple image processing tasks in gimp: copy-pasting parts of an image into another, removing some stuff, blurring, simple layer operations, etc. Anyhow, they got it in a few minutes. Important to say: they are not at all tech-savvy (to my dismay! but this is another story). If they use adobe or krita they will surely find it slightly confusing at the beginning, but no big deal either. Just like a regular person moving from photoshop to gimp.
- orphea 2y ago
  > Is there any other meaning to this word? Yes. You can often learn obscure meanings by prepending a word in your search query with "urban dictionary".
- chongli 2y ago
  A gimp is a man dressed in a bondage suit used for BDSM sexual roleplay. Gimps are considered inappropriate to even talk about in school and business settings. The GIMP software might as well have the name of a curse word like fuck or shit as far as its appropriateness in public discourse goes.
  - redeeman 2y ago
    yeah well.. says more about those who even bring that up... most people probably dont know that
prmoustache 2y ago
I just treat it as an acronym, as do the current developers. The original founders of the project aren't the ones at the helm currently and the GNU Image Manipulation Program acronym took over from whatever pun it was a long time ago already. You might like krita better but maybe it is an insult or genital part name in someone else language but you might never know. It happens to so many products. The Toyota MR2 really sound in french like you are calling someone an asshole which is the reason they called it simply MR in that particular market, while an audi etron sounded like audi feces. All this to say that naming is hard and you can never please everyone. People should really relax and not take personally what has been an acronym for most of the project's life.
noisem4ker 2y ago
There was an effort to rename it to Glimpse, with non-zero community and developer support, also solving a few common complaints about the user interface. It ultimately resulted in a dead fork, disproving not one but two hypotheses.
alexey-salmin 2y ago
> you're preventing people like me (IT teaching, a go-between between techies and non-techies) from being able to recommend it. Why exactly is it bad? It's not that all software have to be loved and recommended by everyone, opinions differ and it's normal. If for you the name matters more than the substance then well maybe you're not the target audience, so be it.
- jrm4 2y ago
  Because I believe in the higher goal of free and open source software, which is more or less the same as the belief that knowledge should be shared -- and the space that GIMP occupies is one that I think a great deal of people would (have benefitted from) if it were to be disrupted from Adobe. No, I don't believe in hiding good software that can help a lot of people under a secret rock.
WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
I'm sure any project with a stupid name cannot survive. Take, for example, git. The name is a literal insult. github? Come on, like "a place where gits meet"? This is ridiculous! How would you expect anyone who is not a git to teach about it? Use it in a serious enterprise setting? ...Ah no, wait a moment...
zahlman 2y ago
Doesn't seem to have caused a problem for Git. Probably didn't for LAME, either, granted MP3 seems to be falling by the wayside now.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
usrusr 2y ago
It's certainly not all that much of an Adobe killer in places where English isn't a first language. And where English is only a second language, the software is the first thing that comes to mind, by far. "Those letters also have a different use in English" comes at a distant second. To second language English speakers (and perhaps even to first language speakers in some regions, but that's pure speculation on my side), that knowledge is more like odd trivia about the software than a hindrance to adaption.

by jrm4 2y ago

hackthemack 2y ago

I think they should just rename it as IMP. The gnu is implied. Richard Stallman might complain it should always be called Gnu IMP (New Imp), which is fine.

shmerl 2y ago

It's not about the name it's about pace of development. It's extremely slow since they don't see a need for more backing like let's say Blender.

veggieroll 2y ago

That's probably true. But offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor is a pretty common old-school hacker goal. It serves a valuable community function by protecting the community from corporate interests, non-technical bike-shedding, and overload by "bug" reports that are actually just the user not being technical enough to use the tool properly. Edit: Also FWIW, I've had no problem introducing GIMP to church groups and in various professional settings. Double edit: since you mention schools, I should also add that I taught my wife GIMP and she had no problem sharing it in her school (US public high school).

CharlesW 2y ago
> But offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor… Some folks who are neither prudish or humorless want to see the project and its contributors succeed to the degree that alternatives like Photopea has, or as Blender has in the 3D space. The project will continue to limp along until the name is changed to something without negative connotations in English-speaking populations.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  You can fork it, rename to something like "Glimpse" and see the adoption skyrocket. Surely the success is just around the corner. Oh wait a minute
  - gkbrk 2y ago
    Hey don't be unfair to them, they also tried to collect donations for changing the name.
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    Point taken — the name is just one of many issues between GIMP and Blender-like success. But there are also open source projects like Inkscape, which enjoyed success in part because of a rechristening that eliminated the headwinds of previous bad names.
troyvit 2y ago
> offending people with prudish attitudes or without a sense of humor is a pretty common old-school hacker goal I agree, and to an extent laud it, but it also means keeping GIMP an old-school hacker project.

DonnieBurger 2y ago

I'd argue that GIMP reclaimed the word for a better meaning. Consider how the word lame has lost its derogatory impact. Googling "gimp" gives me only results about the program. Changing the name now would dilute decades of brand recognition and confuse users, especially those in non-English communities.

monetus 2y ago
I think the sunk cost into branding is the right take here; my 2¢. Gimp is still niche, and will never be used the same way people say Photoshop when referring to any general photo editing. It will take quite a few more years of transient language and lots of success for that unrealistic outcome.

enriquto 2y ago

> his piece of software (...) will never do this unless it changes its name. Why? Honestly, why? As a non-native English speaker (like the vast majority of people in this planet), the word "gimp" to me means "the free software image processing program". If I search google, duckduckgo, bing, whatever, the entire first page of results refers to that very program. Digging deeper, I start to find some references to the Pulp Fiction movie, where a minor character is named like that. I remember that character, but in my language it was called by a different name. Is that all? Is there any other meaning to this word? If so, it must be so obscure as to be completely irrelevant. Please, take into account that most English speakers are not native speakers, and many words will have a different meaning to us. English as a lingua franca may be comfortable to native speakers, but it also means that it's no longer yours. The name of the program does not seem to be a serious issue for its adoption. Now, if you want to talk about its user interface... I don't think it does, either (but I may be open to discussion). I have taught my kids to do simple image processing tasks in gimp: copy-pasting parts of an image into another, removing some stuff, blurring, simple layer operations, etc. Anyhow, they got it in a few minutes. Important to say: they are not at all tech-savvy (to my dismay! but this is another story). If they use adobe or krita they will surely find it slightly confusing at the beginning, but no big deal either. Just like a regular person moving from photoshop to gimp.

orphea 2y ago
> Is there any other meaning to this word? Yes. You can often learn obscure meanings by prepending a word in your search query with "urban dictionary".
chongli 2y ago
A gimp is a man dressed in a bondage suit used for BDSM sexual roleplay. Gimps are considered inappropriate to even talk about in school and business settings. The GIMP software might as well have the name of a curse word like fuck or shit as far as its appropriateness in public discourse goes.
- redeeman 2y ago
  yeah well.. says more about those who even bring that up... most people probably dont know that

prmoustache 2y ago

I just treat it as an acronym, as do the current developers. The original founders of the project aren't the ones at the helm currently and the GNU Image Manipulation Program acronym took over from whatever pun it was a long time ago already. You might like krita better but maybe it is an insult or genital part name in someone else language but you might never know. It happens to so many products. The Toyota MR2 really sound in french like you are calling someone an asshole which is the reason they called it simply MR in that particular market, while an audi etron sounded like audi feces. All this to say that naming is hard and you can never please everyone. People should really relax and not take personally what has been an acronym for most of the project's life.

noisem4ker 2y ago

There was an effort to rename it to Glimpse, with non-zero community and developer support, also solving a few common complaints about the user interface. It ultimately resulted in a dead fork, disproving not one but two hypotheses.

alexey-salmin 2y ago

> you're preventing people like me (IT teaching, a go-between between techies and non-techies) from being able to recommend it. Why exactly is it bad? It's not that all software have to be loved and recommended by everyone, opinions differ and it's normal. If for you the name matters more than the substance then well maybe you're not the target audience, so be it.

jrm4 2y ago
Because I believe in the higher goal of free and open source software, which is more or less the same as the belief that knowledge should be shared -- and the space that GIMP occupies is one that I think a great deal of people would (have benefitted from) if it were to be disrupted from Adobe. No, I don't believe in hiding good software that can help a lot of people under a secret rock.

WesolyKubeczek 2y ago

I'm sure any project with a stupid name cannot survive. Take, for example, git. The name is a literal insult. github? Come on, like "a place where gits meet"? This is ridiculous! How would you expect anyone who is not a git to teach about it? Use it in a serious enterprise setting? ...Ah no, wait a moment...

zahlman 2y ago

Doesn't seem to have caused a problem for Git. Probably didn't for LAME, either, granted MP3 seems to be falling by the wayside now.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

usrusr 2y ago

It's certainly not all that much of an Adobe killer in places where English isn't a first language. And where English is only a second language, the software is the first thing that comes to mind, by far. "Those letters also have a different use in English" comes at a distant second. To second language English speakers (and perhaps even to first language speakers in some regions, but that's pure speculation on my side), that knowledge is more like odd trivia about the software than a hindrance to adaption.