I didn’t even know that Gimp had a slang definition until this thread.

Do you genuinely think this change would help the project? I don’t see how it does anything other than confuse potential users and cause a lot of discussion about something that doesn’t actually improve the functionality itself.

I’m certain renaming GIMP would make a tremendous difference. The name is perceived as offensive & that makes it impossible for people to take seriously, especially in a corporate setting. Edit: As someone who has tried to get people using it because it’s such great software.

Yep, same experience here. The name is a big problem.

I’m also unlikely to recommend it to kids, for example, because googling its name can be risky.

ROTFL. Never heard about this in 20 years. Doing an extended search shows that "gimp" is a kind of latex costume. There are worse things for kids than a latex costume. For example violence.

When I was a kid and trying to learn LaTeX this happened to me all the time on the library computers.

I do not think I have a point, you just made me remember some fun and dreadful moments.

gimp is not a latex costume

google: define gimp

> / (ɡɪmp) / noun. US and Canadian offensive, slang a physically disabled person, esp one who is lame. slang a sexual fetishist who likes to be dominated and who dresses in a leather or rubber body suit with mask, zips, and chains.

(probably from urban dictionary)

see also a real dictionary

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gimp

Someone could easily fork it and change nothing but the branding if the name was such a problem.

I'm pretty sure that the biggest threat to the adoption of GIMP isn't the name GIMP, it's Adobe doing regular Adobe things.

I used it in my high-school multimedia class instead of Photoshop and my (female) teacher never bat an eyelid. I can't imagine many workplaces that would be more prudish than a Catholic school? The biggest obstacle I find is that people are used to Photoshop, and some tools are quite tricky to use (the alignment tool).

They should rename it for americans. For the rest of the world it can stay the same.

Maybe in America. I can assure elsewhere nobody has any idea of the offensive meaning.

We know what a gimp is, the film Pulp Fiction and the internet exist here :-)

I remember I worked in a content creation related company and the director saying “there’s a reason they call it GIMP”

I’m not sure a name change would do that much. The tool itself is behind photoshop from 2010 and the gap is growing.

I could see it's name as an impedance toward adoption in a corporate environment. The name "GIMP" certainly doesn't inspire confidence in someone who's never heard of it before. GLIMPSE, a fork of GIMP, certainly has a better name.

I don't think funny names hinder tool adoption. Photoshop is the standard because it's a better tool than Gimp, although it's non-free.

Companies adopted Git. They'll adopt Gimp if it's better than Photoshop.

FWIW, "git" doesn't have an insulting meaning to most people in the US. "Git" can mean "go" in some US dialects. I would guess that the average person here has no idea that "git" has any kind of negative connotation.

On the other hand, in the US, "gimp" is always either an insult, a derogatory verb, or the open source project.

Git is pretty universally known as referring to an ignorant and unpleasant person.

This is the perfect description for the git command.

No, it's really not. Inside the UK, your statement is true, but inside the US, most people have never heard of this.

Hmm, I'm Australian and it's very well known

Again, Australia and the UK are not like the US, and have different slang.

Where universe fits in the borders of USA.

Our IT could care less.The name seems to rezonate in certain, puritan areas of the world.

You are thinking about one of the two meanings of the term, how about the other one? Ableism is bad, and that's got nothing to do with puritanism.

There is a fork with a rename. Cinepaint. But I don't see it being more popular. Looks like people don't care about the name that much after all.

Cinepaint was never general fork of Gimp and was never meant as a competitor or alternative. It was a fork focusing on solving some very domain specific problems that Gimp wasn't focusing on. Most of those features have since been folded back into Gimp.

There was a fork called Glimpse - it failed hard. Just name is not enough for a project to prosper - surprisingly, you need also actual developers to code.

Just call it GNU IMP.

Or by its full name.