[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".

[jrm4]

Thank you for this. I hate doing "offense aside" but.

Offense aside, you can still understand that this is a bad idea without bringing in the spectre of "is it offensive."

Like I'm saying elsewhere, what if it was called "Poop-edit" or similar? People would quite reasonably not believe it to be quality software, even if it was.

[mixmastamyk]

Poop-edit would get a laugh from me, it already did.

[jrm4]

Yes, me too.

And also, no one would USE IT. That's my point. It really is that simple.

I'm not primarily talking about "being offended." Jokes are fine in some contexts.

I'm saying that if you want people to take your software seriously, it needs a serious name. And that the GIMP people very very stupidly missed a huge opportunity by not doing that.

[mixmastamyk]

But I’ve been using gimp productively for almost thirty years, late 90s on SGI. At no point was the name a factor. Can’t force them to change it either.

And in the dictionary I found at least one quite positive definition. Sometimes word have conflicting meanings and we deal with that successfully every day.