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.
You're viewing a single thread.
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.
I agree with this, but in open source there's an extra layer of complexity: the "I don't care about market share" dev attitude that's sometimes admirable and sometimes frustrating.
But how many people skip it due to the name? What are the actual numbers?
There aren't actual numbers because you can't poll for that. There's not a database somewhere that keeps track of every teacher or manager that says "ew" when someone brings up GIMP. There are some documented examples, though, some of which are listed in the article.
You can survey users of photo editing software and ask something like:
- have you heard of GIMP?
- have you used GIMP?
- if not, why? name, features, ux, etc