" It is strange how the media exploration experiments I do in code seem to not really have much cultural worth in society."

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.

▲

mikolajw 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>how they are percieved by the outside world

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.

	▲	jrm4 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Let me be clear, this has nothing to do with pushing "linguistic sensitivity" for its own sake. Nothing. 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.

▲

ChocolateGod 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Words have different meanings in different languages and regions, also words themselves change meaning over time.

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

▲

lynndotpy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What is the name for this fallacy, "We should all start being adults"? Everyone who is an adult can understand that names matter, especially ones intentionally chosen to cause offense or a ruckus.

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.)

▲

mikolajw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There are over 7000 languages in the world, around half of them dying or having already died due to linguistic domination, in large part English, each with its own set of culturally sensitive words.

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.

	▲	jrm4 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Gonna have to say this a bunch around here, but yours is yet ANOTHER comment shooting the messenger. You (theoretically) are championing an idea of freedom in language or something like that. 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).

▲

jrm4 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, every time I post this point, I get this sort of "but I'm not offended" response.

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.

▲

lynndotpy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's my experience that every professional and educational setting I've tried to use the GIMP in has seen the name as a roadblock and had it swiftly rejected.

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.

▲

as1mov 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If the dev team had a nickel for every time someone complained about the name, there would have enough money by now to fund the development of a UI revamp.

Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...

▲

InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But do they want to do a full UI revamp? My impression is that a lot of people in the gimp ecosystem are happy to be aggressively unwelcoming to a broader audience. They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They call then "snowflakes" and "SJWs" and are gleeful when they fail to make any kinds of improvements.

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.

	▲	as1mov an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. 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.
	▲	cmyk_student 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I can't speak for everyone, but as developers we are trying to emphasis UX/UI work more. We have a dedicated repo now for user feedback, designs, and proposed solutions: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues We implement from there as we can, once consensus has been reached. 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!

▲

II2II 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I grew up as a native English speaker in an English country, and had to look up what gimp means. Should the name be changed? Yes. On the other hand, I have never encountered the word outside of the context of the image editing program. That is unusual, even for an offensive term. It leaves me with the feeling that someone dug up an obscure piece of slang in order to paint the project in a negative light. (I've been using open source for long enough to know that painting open source in a negative light was a thing. For example: it used to be common to paint supporters of open source as Communist, which is treasonous in some circles.)

▲

tokai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Green Is My Pepper is a great name.

▲

raverbashing 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

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

	▲	aleph_minus_one 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users 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.