[lynndotpy]

This is not true, I am in America and the name has been seriously problematic.

This is not surprising, the developers were English-speaking Americans who chose a name to cause offense on purpose, in reference to the full-body sex slave suit in Pulp Fiction: https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/

I don't know who you claim to represent with "the rest of us", but I can only speak for the experience in America. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with me, it's a simple fact that the name GIMP has been a barrier to its adoption.

[mixmastamyk]

Am in California and have never heard this word used outside of the image editor, in my entire life. Not a spring chicken.

Yes, finally looked it up after listening to boring complaints for two decades. Don’t care; mildly amusing collision.

[lynndotpy]

To repeat, it's not a collision, because it was not accidental. Kimball and Mattis named their image editor after the full-body sex-slave suit, on purpose. GIMP is a backronym.

It's also worth emphasizing that "Pulp Fiction" is not an obscure movie, it was actually a very very popular movie from the 1990s and it's still relevant today. It won awards from every organization that gave movies awards. It was recently quoted by the US Secretary of Defense during a prayer, who thought he was quoting the Bible.

While I believe you when you say you're personally not familiar with the usage of the word, it's a word that you can expect most people would recognize.

[mghackerlady]

Do you have any evidence it was done on purpose? The devs have referenced the unfortunate name a few times but I think it is infinitely more likely they chose the name in reference to the poor quality of the software or as a normal acronym

[lynndotpy]

Yes, I cited it an above comment: https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/

Here is the full quote:

> > Your home page says that you created GIMP to address the lack of free or inexpensive Unix graphics tools. How did you guys actually get together to tackle this? Was it like in Blues Brothers? Were you on a mission from God?

> Spencer was my brother's roommate for four years. (He's been my roommate for the past six months). So I knew who he was when we decided to take the compilers course here together. Big mistake. During one of the impossibly boring assignments we decided we wanted to do something which wouldn't suck. The idea of doing the GIMP actually fell out fairly naturally.

> 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.

[mixmastamyk]

Ask anyone under fifty what "pulp fiction" was and prepare to get mostly blank stares. Can barely remember it myself.

Reminds me of those creeps in "Footloose" trying to outlaw dancing. Puritanism can get fucked. ;-)

[lynndotpy]

I'm gen Z, we know what Pulp Fiction is. Even the gen alphas do. We just had a crossover in Fortnite, and Pulp Fiction is in the Chainsaw Man opening.

I'm anti-Puritan as well, but there are far better hills to die on. In either case, it's moot, since "gimp" is also used as an ableist slur.

I haven't seen Footloose, but we don't need analogies to fictional movie villains. The facts are that they decided to give GIMP a stupid name, and so they missed out on investment and adoption because of that decision. It doesn't matter what you or I think, I'm just describing something that already happened.

[F3nd0]

> and Pulp Fiction is in the Chainsaw Man opening.

Not looking to assess how well-known Pulp Fiction is in any particular generation, but Chainsaw Man opening seems to have plenty of obscure references that really say more about its authors than they do about its watchers.

[mixmastamyk]

Sorry, a focus on thirty year old movies and "ableist slur"s puts you far outside the mainstream. These are simply not concerns of every day people, and doubly so for the half that voted tRump.

[lynndotpy]

No need to apologize, you didn't know. In either case, it doesn't matter whether or not Pulp Fiction is "mainstream".

It does not matter what you think. It does not matter what I think. No amount of condescending comments online can go back and change it, the name "GIMP" has caused problems for people, including me, when trying to use it in professional and K-12 contexts.

The ways I personally learned people took offense at these words were when I was trying to use GIMP in highschool, asking if I could "use the GIMP" for a project. My instructor, a man who was paralyzed from the waist down, understandably thought I was punking him. I wouldn't learn this until later, but the most reasonable interpretation was that I was being a shithead, as many teenagers are.

When I explained "GIMP was like Photoshop but free", while Photoshop was already installed on the computers, you won't be surprised the conversation ended there and Photoshop won out.

It's not just that the name was insulting. In most peoples minds, nothing good is free, and "Free photoshop clone" was right up there with "Here's a prize for the 1,000,000th visitor" or "Download these free mouse cursors".