The vast majority of the outside world does not perceive the name the way you do. Even the majority of English users doesn't, as most of them learned standard English as second language at school without being taught vulgar Anglo-American slang.
If you want to pursue linguistic sensitivity, the just direction is against anglophone domination, even if impractical. We should be taking power away from the most powerful and redistributing it back to the weak, not the other way around.
So, it is the anglophones who should stop calling people using a nasty word instead of expecting international, multilingual communities to adapt to their culture.
Look, the author himself wondered out loud why he wasn't more deservedly popular. I put forth a reason why. PR is real. I understand if you really want to keep the name at the possible cost of popularity; but I don't think it's worth it. I wonder if he understood the possible tradeoff.
I've seen GIMP deployed in British schools with no issues. We should all start being adults and stop fussing because some pixels on our screen might spell out a word that in a certain context and certain part of the world might be seen as offensive
First, it doesn't matter how much you or I or the commentator above us changes to "be adults". Only the saddest and most lonesome people will be the sole decisionmaker in every context they exist in.
Sometimes, you exist in a context where you need someone elses permission to use software. This is often the case for employed people.
Second, other adults will disagree with you. It doesn't make them any less "adults".
On the other hand, someone would not be unreasonable to consider you childish if you're so stuck up on your software opinions that you'll disparage everyone around you in the defense of your obscure preferred image editing program. Could you imagine implying to a room of peers that you're the only adult?
It's wonderful for you that GIMP's name has never been a problem for you. But there are about 8 billion people who are not you, and a few dozen of them are fellow GIMP users.
I've been using GIMP for most of its existence but I've faced difficulties trying to use it in school and work. Where I live, "gimp" is a word which means either a slur for someone with a motor disability or as a form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment.
(For what it's worth, the G was added in order to reference the form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment in Pulp Fiction. The program was called 'IMP' beforehand.)
To follow the above mode of reasoning without advantaging one or few languages, you would have to change an enormous amount of words in all languages, if not basically all. This is obviously not feasible.
If GIMP was a dirty word in a Native American language, or a native African language, there would be no debate. That we are debating this at all is because English has privileged status due to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony.
Hence, you are expecting us to give special, privileged treatment to the linguistic sensitivities of your dominant culture. Which is unfair, especially historically, because the hegemony was achieved by mass land steal and many genocides, which we shouldn't be rewarding by allowing further claims.
So yes, it should be expected from an adult anglophone to tolerate the existence of sordophones, words that are dirty in their dialect but not in others, especially in an international, multilingual setting. This is what it means to abstain from linguistic imperialism. This is what it means to tolerate and respect other cultures.
And to enforce tolerance, indeed it may be needed to view those who fail at this as childish.
I feel somewhat sorry to say this, but I need to be assertive here.
Look, people, this is PR. The author wondered out loud "why isn't he more recognized" and a reasonable answer is that "People like me, in America, who love free software and try to get people using it, run into trouble that could have been avoided if the name was changed."
You want your lesson out there on freedom of language, fine, that's what you all got. Just be honest about what you may have missed -- which I genuinely believe could have been a world in which Adobe was nowhere near as annoyingly powerful as it is (or at least had been).
No, it's not necessary to denigrate other people under the belief you can police others by proxy.
"Is this derogatory or offensive?" is a basic localization question that is constantly asked in many languages. Yes, including Arabic.
I generally agree about the evils of linguistic imperialism. But I'm describing the world I live in, not the one I want to create.
But that's beside the point. "Linguistic imperialism" is the wrong lens to use here to defend the name. GIMP is not a sordophone, it's the opposite.
GIMP was named by American-born English speakers with the intent to have an edgy name. GIMP was chosen in reference to the full-body sex garment, because they were college kids and that's funny when you're 23.
The intent was offense. It worked well. It's no surprise that GIMP is only well-adopted where the word doesn't carry its offensive meaning.
While it is pragmatic to chose new names to be appealing to members of dominant societies (I do that too), it is problematic when dominant groups view themselves as entitled to that, which is the case here, and which is why we have this discussion.
>The intent was offense.
First, I am not aware of any evidence that there was an intent to offend. The only source for etymology I know here is an old interview with one of the original developers where he said that he blended the words GNU and Image Manipulation Program, and soon afterwards realized that he heard that word before in a film. There was no suggestion there that he wanted to upset others.
And even if the name was really intended to be edgy, the current developers, who have inherited the codebase from the original authors over two decades ago, view it differently and dissasociate themselves from that etymology in the FAQ. This should be sufficient to close this line of reasoning.
Finally, regarding adoption: I can't tell for sure what it is like for graphics editors, but I haven't ever seen anyone not using SRAM memory and OSRAM lightbulbs in Poland because their names are sordophonic to Polish verbs about defecation (in fact, because of that OSRAM is the only lightbulb brand that I can name from memory). Or even anyone complaining about that, apart from being amused. And I wouldn't dare to demand for these names to change just because they have dirty associations in my language when read a certain way.
That's wrong on every count. The primary source is Peter Mattis' own words in the GIMP Gazette interview, January 1, 1997, by Zachary Beane:
https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/
Mattis> "It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for."
So the sequence was: IMP (rejected) -> XIMP (rejected) -> Pulp Fiction inspires "GIMP" -> they reverse-engineered "General" as the G. The Pulp Fiction reference was the generative act, not an afterthought.
The GNU backronym came later. Same interview:
Mattis> "the GIMP originally stood for General Image Manipulation Program, but has since been dubbed GNU software by Richard Stallman (with our agreement). Spencer and I decided that GNU Image Manipulation Program is a better usage of the 'G'."
He didn't "blend GNU and Image Manipulation Program." He didn't "realize afterwards he'd heard the word in a film." He was a college kid at UC Berkeley in 1995, Pulp Fiction was everywhere, they needed a name, and the word popped into his head. He says so plainly.
Note Mattis' original Usenet announcement uses the phrase "The GIMP" -- with the definite article, exactly like the movie character is called "The Gimp." That's not how you title software. You don't say "The Photoshop" or "The EMACS." You say "The Gimp" because there's a character called The Gimp, and everybody in 1995 knew exactly which one.
Peter Mattis' original Usenet announcement, comp.os.linux.development.apps, November 21, 1995:
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.development.apps/c...
Nobody needs to speculate about intent when Mattis spelled it out himself more than 30 years ago.
GIMP project history, written ~1998 by Seth Burgess:
https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html
The number one association most of the population of Earth have with the word "GIMP" is:
Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD:
>That's not how you title software. You don't say "The Photoshop" or "The EMACS."
Nitpick: The Sims, The WELL, TheFacebook are all attestable. But yeah, fair.
>The number one association most of the population of Earth have with the word "GIMP" is:
>Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD:
I suppose that here you didn't mean that most of the population of Earth watched and understood the English version of Pulp Fiction, or that the majority of people in the world will associate the word "gimp" with anything else than the graphics editor (certainly neither would be true), but that the second most-common association among all anglophones taken together after the GIMP editor itself is the Gimp character from Pulp Fiction.
That is not what is happening here.
> There was no suggestion there that he wanted to upset others.
As someone else pointed out, that's a misunderstanding of the interview. As I've said several times, the GIMP is named after the full-body sex garment. (It's just an unfortunate thing that the word is also a slur for someone with motor disabilities).
> the current developers ... view it differently
I would need a source for this. My understanding is everyone is aware of the name and has been steadfast by it for years.
> This should be sufficient to close this line of reasoning.
No, it is not. You imagined how the developers must feel. And even then, it does not matter how the developers feel.
> I haven't ever seen anyone not using SRAM memory and OSRAM lightbulbs in Poland
That's wonderful, but this is not an analogous situation. I don't think you're even reading my post. "Gimp" is not a sordophone, it's a derogatory term and the name of a full-body sex garment.
> I wouldn't dare to demand for these names to change
Congratulations for you, but nobody's talking about that. It's not the question at hand. The question is whether or not GIMPs adoption and investment was hurt because the images the name conjures up.
And to be clear, I don't think it's a given! The most generous interpretation is that they chose the name to deter users, contributors, and investment. These aren't necessarily measures of success.
For example, if a friend named their bicycle repair shop "Grandma's Diarrhea Yogurt Warehouse", I'd wonder why they chose that name, but I'd assume they aren't trying to run a profitable business. If they told me it was actually an elaborate acronym, we'd both know that they're acting facetiously. (Of course, this is not analogous, as 'Grandmas Diarrhea' is not as belligerent a term as 'gimp'.)
All I'm arguing for is that GIMP is less adopted and less used than it would have been if it were named better. I am describing things that we already know to have happened, and which I and others in this thread have observed firsthand. There's nothing to do thought experiments about.
I'm not either, personally. But I live in America, a pretty strong force, for better or lately probably worse. And GIMP is very good software, but the name makes it hard to recommend or take seriously. Not even in terms of "I'm offended" but in terms of "if you thought this software was good why would you name it something like that?"
GIMP perhaps could have competed with Adobe stuff, but we will never know because this name doesn't make it out the door for a number of related reasons. Don't shoot me on this fact, I'm just the messenger.
It's really a shame they were steadfast in that one baffling decision. It was so self-destructive to the project. I wonder what would have happened if they stayed with their original name IMP, or found a different Pulp Fiction reference to make.
Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...
Some of these people can be found in this very thread.
The problem with gimp is not one of budgets, it's that many of the people involved in gimp see its current state as how things should be.
They will probably not attack people who want to fix these issues, but only those who leave drive-by one liner low effort comments about the UI.
We also highlight UX/UI improvements in each new release post. Just like with coding, we rely on volunteers to help with this (you definitely don't want someone like me deciding on interfaces!) We have a couple active designers assisting us, but we're always looking for more feedback!
That's why to most people you end up looking like an asshole when you suggest they try GIMP. Then you have to apologize and agree that it's a terrible name, but a great image editing program. But the damage is already done.
It's as simple as that, just like as if it were named after the n-word. What else would you expect?
The g-word is arguably just as bad as the n-word, and it's not the sexual connotation, it's the fact that it viciously punches down making fun of disabled people.
And people who act that way and use those words on purpose are assholes.
Donald Trump mocks a reporter's disability:
Amem
If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users
Usability. Focus. Heck, even this strawberry of a low hanging fruit like the name cannot be solved by a nerd committee apparently.
Then honestly you can't complain when people don't use your sw
Depending on the circle (including lots of circles of "general users") annoying people who are obsessed about whether something could offend snowflakes is seen as welcoming.
Not to me, and -- this is a thing I keep harping on -- love it or not, I can explain why.
You live in a society, and as a result you have to do a little bit of homework on names, and what they mean, and how they are percieved by the outside world. It is SUPER interesting to me that the first bit of this interview is literally ABOUT NAMES, and that the following point is missed.
GIMP is a terrible name. Atrociously bad. And I still strongly believe it is a reason -- it might even be the PRIMARY reason -- why such an otherwise great tool did not grow in popularity.