I have never, and do not know anybody who has, avoided good software for something as stupidly trivial as its name. If the name were one of the more hardcore expletives I'd maybe think twice. As it stands, this one is fairly vanilla as far as problematic words go, is clearly typeset as an acronym, and is principally a reference to Pulp Fiction, therefore being at least one referential layer away from the original term. I would like to see statistics on who actually cares about this.
When I’m sitting down and teaching my kid how to edit a photo or sketch a drawing, do you honestly see me sitting them down to a GIMP session?
And when I’m not around, and they want to pull up their favourite drawing program, do you see them typing “gimp” into the search bar? Which - as of Windows 11 - now helpfully loads internet results and related ads?
Or do I just start them on Krita, a much more powerful and user friendly open source program, with significantly less risk of accidentally encountering the GIMP’s namesakes? Or me getting a call from my kid’s school to ask why my kid is talking about gimps?
No, you probably wouldn't teach your kid to use GIMP as a first image editor, just like you wouldn't teach them LaTeX as their first way to produce documents. I agree, Krita is better for new users.
Google "gimp" for me. What are the top results? What's highlighted in the sidebar? I don't see an issue. You have to scroll down a ways before you get to Urban Dictionary, I can't imagine a kid doing that instead of clicking the first result with the cute dog picture.
The school thing is the first actual problem. But then, it's an easy thing to clarify. I'm of the opinion that it's a good thing that their first experience of that word is an image editor, it detracts from the offensive meaning. The hope being that the offensive meaning will be relegated to an obscure footnote, the primary definition of the word to them being GIMP. We shouldn't give offensive words more power, we should diminish their power by using them in non-offensive contexts. See the adaptation of the word "cunt" in Australia.
If I google the word 'gimp' in a private browsing tab (so not logged in, no cookies, safe search on), I get these three links - with Google showing the article images! - in a news box after the third result:
Then there's the Urban Dictionary, as you mention. So yes, there's an issue.
> See the adaptation of the word "cunt" in Australia.
I'm Australian, so I understand pretty well how we use the word cunt. Contrary to popular perceptions, if you called someone a cunt at a work meeting, you'd probably be fired on the spot. Similarly, it would be... a career limiting move to pitch your supervisors on the idea of switching key business operations to a system called 'Cunt'.
Gimp is just not a good name. Context matters. I appreciate a bit of colour and character as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place, and 'the name of a major piece of free software' just ain't it.
I repeated your experiment and do not see the news box. I see those articles if I select the News tab. Otherwise the results match my findings. I'm willing to concede that those articles can show up to certain users, however they are definitely not the first results, which is important to note.
I am certainly less informed than yourself about the Australian lexicon. I was wrong to jump to the most widely recognized example and should have picked a different one which matched my point more closely, and one on which I was more informed.
My point was not that "cunt" is acceptable in businesses meetings, my point was that it was comparatively _more acceptable in common parlance_ than in other cultures. The message being that the words themselves are not innately offensive, but the meanings attached to them that can vary with time and context, and their impact can be lessened by repeat exposure in a non-offensive setting. I believe that is preferable to outright banning certain phonemes and maintaining their offensive power.
You can see this in action in our Google example - the image editor has the top results and the offensive term is in the newsbox (which we've proved is not universal), and lower down on the search page. The more popular the editor gets, the less prominent the other results are. I think that's a good thing.
I apologise - I double checked and I was wrong about the search results. I get those results on DuckDuckGo, not Google. Not great for DDG, but not the same as Google results.
I understand and appreciate your point, but I'm going to have to disagree with you that the goal - when naming software - is to rehabilitate words, and that of all words the word 'gimp' is in particular need of rehabilitation. Its main use today appears to be in the fetish community, and I'm absolutely fine with that! But it's not a good name or association for an unrelated image editor, in my mind.
I just don't think it is a good idea to put loaded language into people's Start bars, whatever the author's intention, when the people just want to use an image editor.
Non English speakers should have no such issue with the name and adoption in that population should be higher than English speakers. But is it? If similar usage, the problem is somewhere else.
From experience, the issues raised where total lack of CMYK, limited to 8 bit per channel,lack of even basic non destructive editing, crude paint engine, no healing tool, etc. Some have been solved partially or totally over the years, but too late for some users.
