But as someone who works in IT between tech folk and regular folk, I immediately percieve that a great number of liminal regular folk are going to 100% nope out of a terrible name like this. Might as well call it Poopy Edit or something like that.

My, small but non zero, experience says the reason these speakers of other language declined to use it was because it lacked features and sometimes because "piracy is also free". They pointed the brush system was basic, PS already had effects they used a lot. No adjustment layers, styles or layer groups to be more efficient. Slow processing because it operated in full data always, while PS solved preview first and the rest in background. And many other things. The Mac ones found no issues with the windowing system (no MDI mode then, with everything wrapped by big window), because it matched more what they were used to, but Windows users found it bad because their OS is not designed for it. None cared about what Gimp or Wilber words are, it was "a poor PS clone with a croissant dog mascot".