> his piece of software (...) will never do this unless it changes its name.
Why?
Honestly, why?
As a non-native English speaker (like the vast majority of people in this planet), the word "gimp" to me means "the free software image processing program". If I search google, duckduckgo, bing, whatever, the entire first page of results refers to that very program. Digging deeper, I start to find some references to the Pulp Fiction movie, where a minor character is named like that. I remember that character, but in my language it was called by a different name. Is that all?
Is there any other meaning to this word? If so, it must be so obscure as to be completely irrelevant.
Please, take into account that most English speakers are not native speakers, and many words will have a different meaning to us. English as a lingua franca may be comfortable to native speakers, but it also means that it's no longer yours.
The name of the program does not seem to be a serious issue for its adoption. Now, if you want to talk about its user interface... I don't think it does, either (but I may be open to discussion). I have taught my kids to do simple image processing tasks in gimp: copy-pasting parts of an image into another, removing some stuff, blurring, simple layer operations, etc. Anyhow, they got it in a few minutes. Important to say: they are not at all tech-savvy (to my dismay! but this is another story). If they use adobe or krita they will surely find it slightly confusing at the beginning, but no big deal either. Just like a regular person moving from photoshop to gimp.
A gimp is a man dressed in a bondage suit used for BDSM sexual roleplay. Gimps are considered inappropriate to even talk about in school and business settings. The GIMP software might as well have the name of a curse word like fuck or shit as far as its appropriateness in public discourse goes.
Literally, get over it. Even my (extremely conservative) church group doesn't have an issue with it. 1) because most people don't know BDSM terminology and 2) gimp has other connotations so it's not even obvious that was intended and 3) most people aren't terminally online and 100% don't care as long as the program works.
I've never had a problem sharing it. And no one outside tech has ever brought up BDSM when I tell them about the program or help them install it.
Sigh. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
An extremely conservative church group is perhaps the worst place to try to figure this out; y'all will self-censor naturally.
Anyway, I teach IT, in a department -- shared with Communications -- and can absolutely assure you that this name is a no-go. I get that people don't like "politics" and "optics" and such, but that's what's happening here.
I didn't say no-one gets upset by the name. I said that they're being silly gooses.
If your department wouldn't use free software because of the name, that's very much a them problem. And it's sad that they're so sensitive.
If you don't like the name, you don't have to use the software. Or fork it can call it something more anodyne to your sensibilities.
But no. You want everyone to cater to sensitive people. And thus, myself and others are here to say your comment is annoying when this comes up every thread that GIMP is mentioned.
This is something that non-english speakers have long learned to live with. It is due time that everybody accepts that some words will sound funny to them. In french, for example, "bit" means "penis". This creates quite a stir when you teach computer science to kids. Yet nobody says that computer science is a no-go!
The cool thing about life is that, we don't have to get over it. Instead we can advocate for change. And there's literally nothing you can do about it lol.
Another cool thing about open source is that I can do that while still trying to affect change in the core repo :D
There's really no "shut up and go away" that you can give me that will work, because you aren't some grand FOSS arbiter, you're just some rando on the internet like me.
Eh. Where I work they probably wouldn't care about the BDSM aspects but they are pretty sensitive to ableist slurs, which is primarily why I recommend Photopea instead of GIMP when they need to do Photoshop-ish things.
Thanks for the clarification (as well as the suggestion of looking at the urban dictionary, in the other comment).
My point is that when you say:
> Gimps are considered inappropriate to even talk about in school and business settings
This refers solely to the tiny percent of the world where people are native english speakers. Elsewhere, it already means the image processing software, if anything at all.
Anyone whose native language is english who's seen "Pulp Fiction", or hasnt been under a rock, or older than a young teen would have encountered the term or concept
As a french, the first and only thing that comes to mind when I hear the word "gimp" is the software, not the kink. It was shared a few weeks ago in my company chat because someone wanted to do a photo edit and absolutely no one even made any semblance of joke related to it
Why?
Honestly, why?
As a non-native English speaker (like the vast majority of people in this planet), the word "gimp" to me means "the free software image processing program". If I search google, duckduckgo, bing, whatever, the entire first page of results refers to that very program. Digging deeper, I start to find some references to the Pulp Fiction movie, where a minor character is named like that. I remember that character, but in my language it was called by a different name. Is that all?
Is there any other meaning to this word? If so, it must be so obscure as to be completely irrelevant.
Please, take into account that most English speakers are not native speakers, and many words will have a different meaning to us. English as a lingua franca may be comfortable to native speakers, but it also means that it's no longer yours.
The name of the program does not seem to be a serious issue for its adoption. Now, if you want to talk about its user interface... I don't think it does, either (but I may be open to discussion). I have taught my kids to do simple image processing tasks in gimp: copy-pasting parts of an image into another, removing some stuff, blurring, simple layer operations, etc. Anyhow, they got it in a few minutes. Important to say: they are not at all tech-savvy (to my dismay! but this is another story). If they use adobe or krita they will surely find it slightly confusing at the beginning, but no big deal either. Just like a regular person moving from photoshop to gimp.