[vy8vWJlco]

(Obligatory) Those who make a thing (not to mention give it away for free, in this case) can name it whatever they like. If there are people out there not using the GIMP because of its awesome name, well... That's their loss, but long live self-expression.

[pyre]

The idea isn't that people can't name things as they like. It's that they should consider the name if they want wide adoption (See RMS and $POSIXLY_CORRECT-vs-$POSIX_ME_HARDER).

[vy8vWJlco]

Perhaps you might clarify your reference. Based on my understanding, RMS is describing the difficulty addressing machine-compatibility between different implementations of a supposedly-similar interface/protocol/specification. The name of a wholly new application doesn't have similar obligations. A person might think about the implications of the name socially, but is still ultimately free to ignore them. Even RMS notes "I would guess that very very few users set POSIXLY_CORRECT [vy8vWJlco: the more socially-congenial name]. If users don't like these decisions (or any others we make), they are free to change them." ( http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_int... ) It's open source, so someone could fork it with a new identity.

[pyre]

Maybe POSIXLY_CORRECT was probably a bad example as it's not necessarily a heavily used option. On the other hand, no one is crying 'censorship' (or stifling of artistic creativity) because RMS didn't name it POSIX_ME_HARDER.

  | It's open source, so someone could fork it
  | with a new identity.

We've seen this happen before (e.g. OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Jenkins/Hudson). Just because it's an option doesn't mean that people can't complain about the decisions that cause these splits.

[vy8vWJlco]

And yet, noone's forked the GIMP just to change it's name. ("A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"...) Those other examples of forks you gave are also examples where a quorum of the major contributors chose a different path; whereas, in this case, the major contributors chose the name.