[pmontra]

In non-English speaking countries gimp is a short word that is so seldom used that nobody knows what it means. I used GIMP for a very long time before running into a story about the meaning of the English world. It was only GNU Image Manipulation Program to me.

It still is a contender for image editing programs, for limited photo retouch, for very limited drawing (draw a rectangle outline without googling?) I use LibreOffice Draw for that.

[graemep]

It did stop it from being used in a multiple markets though. Fine is some places, not in others is not good branding, especially when one of the places its not fine in is the biggest and most influential market.

[ffaccount2]

Nobody in my middle and high school had any idea "gimp" had an English meaning. I assume if anyone knew, we kids would at least occasionally joke about it (we used gimp for various projects).

It was long after university after I learned that it's also an English word.

[jrm4]

I don't know why people keep making this point as if it matters; it sounds like you might be trying to absolve the creators or something.

But again, the people who gave the name to the project deliberately chose it because they found its slight offensiveness to be funny.

They knew what they were doing and chose to continue to do it anyway.

[jrm4]

I've been up and down this debate a million times, a lot of it here, suffice it to say -- the fact that you and others don't recognize this does not at all detract from my point.

To summarize, it's not e.g. about me being personally offended -- it's about people like me (a long time ago) wanting to show people this great software and other reasonable people seeing the name, understanding the meaning, and reasonably thinking "If this software were actually good, why does it have such a ridiculous and often offensive name?"

An unserious name -- literally chosen to be an edgy joke -- projects "unserious software."