The problem with GIMP
The problem with GIMP
GIMP was named after a character in Pulp Fiction. More than 20 years later, the name remains controversial and could be holding back the project.
this is just stupid. like oh my god how dare they to use name thst is also tied to bdsm. it might just be me but I have never thought about the wrong gimp then talking about gnu image manipulation program. also it's an acronym that works
My IQ continually dropped while reading this summary and anyone that knows me would tell you that I can't afford that.
Agreed, it's such a poor summary of the article that I can't tell if it's an intentional strawman argument.
I think the
it's sometimes said as a derogatory word for people with physical or mental disabilities
part is the problematic one, not the BDSM connotations. imagine if it was named Functional Advanced Graphics Generating Opensource Tool in the 90s and they refused to change the name because "it was different times back then oh and we don't want to sterilise language".
Those points are addressed in the article. It's not an issue for a lot of people, but it's still an issue.
Everything is an issue if you try hard enough. Feel free to fork and rename if you’re not happy. You seem to have a lot of time to waste.
Going solely by the headline, I was expecting an article about how the developers never fix the well known usability problems compared to Photoshop because they’re expert users and DGAF about appealing to new users.
Instead it’s an article about how developers never fix the well known problem of an offensive name because they like being “edgy” and DGAF about appealing to new users.
While I understand the author's frustration with the developers not giving as much weight to the (non-contributing) community, the fact is that the developers get to make the final call on this, and they get to use whatever criteria they like.
And there's no definitive answer to whether a name change would be a net positive or negative--a handful of complaints vs brand dilution is a subjective call. And for the number of users, I get the impression that it's not as big of a deal to most people as it is to the author.
Right, ultimately it's their project and they can do what they want, but it's also their loss every time some person or organization skips it because of the name.
Can they just insist it's pronounced like jimp and sidestep the issue? Imgur, .gif, GNOME, GIPHY get to set their own rules on pronunciation.
Pack up lads. We solved it. Back to jimp.
That's brilliant.
In my opinion it is its limited suitability for (my) common image editing needs. I.e. add a white text with black border to an image.
But these are my requirements. The developers don't have to cater to them if they don't want to. I in turn can decide to not use the program or add the features I would like to see myself (It's the former for me).
That is the way it is.
Edit: The name gimp was never an issue for me. There are far worse.
No, it was named after the character, GIMP is a reverse acronym:
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.
TIL
Honestly IMP would have been dope
It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for.
Gag
Honestly, this is such a dumb argument. The creators of The GIMP acknowledge that this is a reference to a BDSM kink popularized by Pulp Fiction. Leather bondage masks are probably the first thing most people think of when they hear the word "Gimp".
Yes, it is also a relatively obscure ableist term for someone with a visible physical disability, but this was never what the creators had in mind with the name. Pretty much nobody uses this term anymore.
Just let it be. If you oppose it for being ableist you're just pretending that the name is a reference to something offensive, when it's a well understood fact that it wasn't named after the ableist term. If you oppose it for what the creators named it after, you're basically just kink shaming, and I really don't care if the program is a reference to bondage sex.
Surprisingly people don't constantly rally against LAME, the MP3 media encoder, and liblame is a massively important library for audio processing used by just about every computer in existence. This was deliberately named after the ableist term, and the 'L' in "LAME" stands for "LAME", so they could have used literal any -AME name they wanted, and kept their stupid recursive abbreviation + ironic project name that was so popular at the time (LAME stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder").
Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn't old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.
I get where this article's coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn't last long enough to do much in that regard.
Better than my memory though, here's an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.
Then don't use it.
Or fork it and remove all instances of the word. Put the pearls down, you're grinding them to dust.
I assume this article is about how I want to pull my hair out when trying to do anything in that program because everything feels so obtuse and weird and nothing else.
Use Photoshop once and Gimp is ruined forever.
Has nothing to do with the name. I think it's cute and it's an acronym. I know someone that had a disease called DIC - now that's an acronym that someone needs to rethink.
Use Photoshop once and Gimp is ruined forever.
This is very much like saying "Use Windows once, and Linux is ruined forever".
Once I actually learned how to use GIMP, I was able to appreciate it. It does things differently than PhotoShop, and, in some cases, I preferred the GIMP way of doing things to PhotoShop. It does take time to learn, though, and you can't just learn PS and then hop onto GIMP and expect to do things the same way.
If you're going to make an ancient argument that was dumb af even then you may as well go full GeoCities with animated gifs and shit. HTML5 will let you reimplement <blink> and <marquee>.
I'm curious whether there's anyone in this thread who is cool with, for instance, Github renaming the default branch name to "main" but thinks GIMP renaming would be woke BS.
For the record, I'm for both changes and and yes I do have a glass case where I keep my downvote collection.
People are too sensitive today.
Always have been, nowadays it's just easier to hear other people's opinions
I liked the part where he said that a hard fork was not a solution...and then talks favorably about the name change of OpenOffice to LibreOffice with a fork.
If the developers won't bend to the will of the users, you can't force them. Do what we've always done in that situation: make a fork. I'm sure if it's that important to so many people, it can be done.
Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a legit app to me. Sounds like some guy’s personal project.
Calling your cool new app “TARD,” for example — and then insisting (with a straight face) that it is simply an acronym and “people should get over it” — is just being stupid and missing the entire point…while failing miserably.
I stopped using it because of the dev's attitude towards people wanting them to change the name. I switched to Krita
I dislike using a slur for disabled people as the name but it's only partially why I stopped using it. Bad cross-platform support, sticking to ancient GTK versions, GNOME-fication of the upcoming 3.0 version, etc. also pushed me away.
