On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM, John B wrote:

IMO this would be a valid reason for a name change. Has that ever been considered?

Search the archives - this has been discussed to death... and there will be no name change.

Chris

On 10/28/09, John B wrote:

I use Gimp frequently, and I find this pretty concerning.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gimp#Noun_2

There is no way I'm wearing a Gimp T-Shirt after reading item #5.

Fine with me. Don't wear it.

Worse, I seem to recall the Gimp mascot being referred to as "a gimp" in multiple occasions on the website.

You got it wrong. Mascot's name is Wilber and he thinks you should apologize.

IMO this would be a valid reason for a name change. Has that ever been considered?

The name change is out of question. Read the FAQ really. It's all there, in nice latin letters :)

Alexandre

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 5:35 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

Worse, I seem to recall the Gimp mascot being referred to as "a gimp" in multiple occasions on the website.

You got it wrong. Mascot's name is Wilber and he thinks you should apologize.

No, John is correct: GIMP's mascot Wilber(sp?) is a gimp.

John B wrote:

Well, if it's out of the question, then I guess I'll just shut up before this becomes a big argument.
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It seems to be "out of the question" as far as convincing the developers here to ever do that. Under the terms of the GPL3, however, there is nothing to stop you from forking the code and doing that yourself.

Probably the best way, I would imagine, would be to keep nearly all the code the same, but to add a configure options (like "--better-name") that causes the logo and title bar name to be replaced. But if you were to go to all the trouble, you would want to come up with a really classy name and well-designed logo or else no one would care.

I'm sure that has been mentioned in the archives as well, but I thought I'd mention it again in case you actually had the time and interest to do it. Personally, I don't like the name GIMP either, as it's not a very selling name. I know that annoys many of the (dedicated, hardworking) developers, but we all have the right to our own opinion.

Lame, crippled, inept, deficient, or sexual deviant .....

I get that it's an acronym, but that doesn't mean it isn't incredibly strange to want to associate a project that the developers are proud of with any of these interpretations!

..... Mark

John B-12 wrote:

I use Gimp frequently, and I find this pretty concerning.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gimp#Noun_2

There is no way I'm wearing a Gimp T-Shirt after reading item #5. Worse, I seem to recall the Gimp mascot being referred to as "a gimp" in multiple occasions on the website.

IMO this would be a valid reason for a name change. Has that ever been considered?

John

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 7:35 PM, vabijou2 wrote:

Lame, crippled, inept, deficient, or sexual deviant .....

I get that it's an acronym, but that doesn't mean it isn't incredibly strange to want to associate a project that the developers are proud of with any of these interpretations!

You are restarting an argument that is already a decade old, and has been fought to conclusion a dozen times over. If you REALLY think it needs to be revisited, read all of the old posts and come up with a new point to make, or at least address the reasoning given repeatedly for not changing.

Patrick Horgan wrote:

The same site you cited has the following: Adjective
gimp ( comparative more gimp, superlative most gimp)

Positive
gimp




Comparative
more gimp




Superlative
most gimp

( dated , Scotland and N England) Neat ; trim ; delicate ; slender ;
handsome ;
spruce ;
elegant .

Patrick

So just because some old farts in Scotland may have good associations with the word, you think that renders the rest of the English-speaking world's interpretation silly? %-|

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Christopher Howard wrote:

John B wrote:

Well, if it's out of the question, then I guess I'll just shut up before this becomes a big argument.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:41 AM, vabijou2 wrote:

So just because some old farts in Scotland may have good associations with the word, you think that renders the rest of the English-speaking world's interpretation silly?  %-|

Personally, I think the question you just asks renders you silly (and arrogant) for presuming to speak for 'the rest of the English-speaking world'. This is an issue on which opinions *are* divided within 'the English-speaking world'.
I personally have never seen the movie 'Pulp Fiction' on which the interpretation of GIMP as offensive seems to come, and while I agree that 'Pulp Fiction' is fairly famous, I believe it's rather America-centric to assume every English speaker holds that association.

On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 19:41 -0400, Sparr wrote:

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 7:35 PM, vabijou2 wrote:

Lame, crippled, inept, deficient, or sexual deviant .....

I get that it's an acronym, but that doesn't mean it isn't incredibly strange to want to associate a project that the developers are proud of with any of these interpretations!

You are restarting an argument that is already a decade old, and has been fought to conclusion a dozen times over.

Fought to conclusion yes, but I can't remember anyone ever agreeing. I think even within the people who develop or contribute to gimp via discussion, people just eventually give up and go along with the joke. The name and the joke is on so many levels not very clever, there is a lot of tautology in the meaning only a little less when general became GNU. There is also the obvious association between gimp in leather, or gimp with a limp, or meanings in other languages (although the relevance of this point is questionable in most circumstances).

We as people have more important things to do, whether it is with GIMP or the real world. Hell, I count getting drunk and waking up in a gutter as more important than re-hashing conversations that have little merit.

On a more serious note, and to rehash what Sven has said before, if this was ever considered there is a lot of brand association with the name GIMP even for people who tried gimp 5+ years ago, and say GIMP is clunky because of this crazy weird UI (quite literally a gimp ui-wise). If a name change was considered, the only thing other than 'GIMP' that could be associated as GIMP (for me personally) is Wilber or Wilber Image Editor. Which to me sounds cool and funky, it also gets rid of the duality of association between GIMP, gimp and Wilber the gimp, and more importantly me having to read this conversation repeatedly.

In conclusion, I think it is a dry joke between people who understand, it is that cliquish understanding which perpetuates the idea that the joke is funny, clever or culturally significant. I propose that GIMP as a project is what we care about, and frankly everyone working on GIMP should be damn proud of what is being achieved. The name on the other hand, only contains value for brand association or for those who find it clever.

regards,
Stephen.

Well, if we're going to do this discussion, I think I'll just unsubscribe for a while.

Let me know when you guys decide to keep the name GIMP. Or better yet, don't.

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 10:48 +1030, David Gowers wrote:

It doesn't really matter that much to the developers *what* it is called, as far as I know.
The point is really the branding... changing name will definitively LOSE a lot of users, no matter what the current name is or the intended name is.
There may be solutions to this problem (though commercially, rebranding seems to involve a lot of expensive advertising). So far, no-one has proposed one (or demonstrated that the current name is problematic in an actual provable way -- just assertions that it is offensive or not offensive in so-or-so region.).

All the above comprise a significant factor in why forks are regarded, at best, as a necessary evil. All forks dilute branding, which introduces user confusion and repels potential users.

So I do agree with one thing you said -- If you were to fork the project you would need to do so really well. This would probably involve forking the gimp-docs and gimp-gap similarly (and maybe also FX-Foundry) in order to cover the 'gimp' references in these most commonly installed accessories. It would also be important to make it very clear that it is compatible with GIMP plug-ins, and therefore to search GIMP's global plug-in/resource directories for resources as well as the fork's plugin/resource directories (identifying and ignoring duplicate resources). It would require the mascot to be changed (and therefore also some of the icon set, as they include Wilber), and also some (all?) of the gimp-docs screenshots, as well as some of the example images in gimp-docs which use Wilber. It would require a strategy for dealing with existing .gimp-2.7/ directories.

That's my understanding at a glance. Actually doing it well would be more involved than the above, I expect. (for example, we use the phrase 'happy GIMPing!' and similar verb-ing of the GIMP name.. so it would help to have the replacement name be easily verb-able too)

If we are going to have this conversation again and we will either until the name changes or the sun burns out, we should argue rationally. Pushing forward the idea that someone should fork the project insinuates that people are unhappy with the current leadership with all the skills it would require to maintain gimp, this is definitely not the case. If a fork did occur, it only requires forking the application, even thought the plug-ins, docs etc are very valuable.

If the argument for keeping the name is seriously that the project branding is valuable, why don't we write that in the FAQ?

Would we seriously loose a lot of users if the name changed? are users attached to the name or the program? if we do suspect that users would not be able to associate the product with the name are there steps that we could take to mitigate this problem? There is another way this could go, which is that changing the name generates a lot of positive publicity and no doubt it would. Hatred of the name generates negative publicity as it is.

The name GIMP is not so invaluable that it cannot be changed, also there is a massive number of outsiders who find the name truly unappealing, I do not hear the raw of the people saying they love the name.

Whether or not we are sick to death of this conversation it will keep coming back, because the arguments against the name are valid.

regards, Stephen.

Stephen Griffiths wrote:

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 10:48 +1030, David Gowers wrote:

It doesn't really matter that much to the developers *what* it is called, as far as I know.
The point is really the branding... changing name will definitively LOSE a lot of users, no matter what the current name is or the intended name is.
There may be solutions to this problem (though commercially, rebranding seems to involve a lot of expensive advertising). So far, no-one has proposed one (or demonstrated that the current name is problematic in an actual provable way -- just assertions that it is offensive or not offensive in so-or-so region.).

All the above comprise a significant factor in why forks are regarded, at best, as a necessary evil. All forks dilute branding, which introduces user confusion and repels potential users.

So I do agree with one thing you said -- If you were to fork the project you would need to do so really well. This would probably involve forking the gimp-docs and gimp-gap similarly (and maybe also FX-Foundry) in order to cover the 'gimp' references in these most commonly installed accessories. It would also be important to make it very clear that it is compatible with GIMP plug-ins, and therefore to search GIMP's global plug-in/resource directories for resources as well as the fork's plugin/resource directories (identifying and ignoring duplicate resources). It would require the mascot to be changed (and therefore also some of the icon set, as they include Wilber), and also some (all?) of the gimp-docs screenshots, as well as some of the example images in gimp-docs which use Wilber. It would require a strategy for dealing with existing .gimp-2.7/ directories.

That's my understanding at a glance. Actually doing it well would be more involved than the above, I expect. (for example, we use the phrase 'happy GIMPing!' and similar verb-ing of the GIMP name.. so it would help to have the replacement name be easily verb-able too)

If we are going to have this conversation again and we will either until the name changes or the sun burns out, we should argue rationally. Pushing forward the idea that someone should fork the project insinuates that people are unhappy with the current leadership with all the skills it would require to maintain gimp, this is definitely not the case. If a fork did occur, it only requires forking the application, even thought the plug-ins, docs etc are very valuable.

If the argument for keeping the name is seriously that the project branding is valuable, why don't we write that in the FAQ?

Would we seriously loose a lot of users if the name changed? are users attached to the name or the program? if we do suspect that users would not be able to associate the product with the name are there steps that we could take to mitigate this problem? There is another way this could go, which is that changing the name generates a lot of positive publicity and no doubt it would. Hatred of the name generates negative publicity as it is.

The name GIMP is not so invaluable that it cannot be changed, also there is a massive number of outsiders who find the name truly unappealing, I do not hear the raw of the people saying they love the name.

Whether or not we are sick to death of this conversation it will keep coming back, because the arguments against the name are valid.

regards, Stephen.

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When I mentioned "forking the project" I wasn't thinking of having a version of GIMP out there that was actually following a fully separate development path with a bunch of disgrunted GIMP developers. Rather, it could be the exact same thing except with a patched-in configure option or something that allowed rebranding. For example, in Gentoo (a source based Linux distribution) when you compile Firefox, you can pass in an "iceweasel" configure option that rebrands it with the Debian logos, or you can pass in a "bindist" option that rebrands it with generic branding.

If the official GIMP developers (the people who own the repository) don't want to change the name of GIMP, but half the users don't like the name, then patching the code is the only option left for those users. And this is one of the great things about open source software: if you don't like something about a particular piece of software (like the branding) you are at full liberty to change that piece of the software.

Anyway, if I myself was going to dedicate the time to doing this, I would probably set up the forked/patched code in such a way so that the user/distributor could decide at compile time what branding he wanted.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Christopher Howard wrote:

Stephen Griffiths wrote:
When I mentioned "forking the project" I wasn't thinking of having a version of GIMP out there that was actually following a fully separate development path with a bunch of disgrunted GIMP developers. Rather, it could be the exact same thing except with a patched-in configure option or something that allowed rebranding. For example, in Gentoo (a source based Linux distribution) when you compile Firefox, you can pass in an "iceweasel" configure option that rebrands it with the Debian logos, or you can pass in a "bindist" option that rebrands it with generic branding.

Sure.. except, I listed the things that would be needed for that. If you do not do at least most of those things, you would only be doing a partial rebranding. You would have parts of the overall package calling itself GIMP rather than the new name. If this would happen, the confusion caused by it almost certainly would be more 'expensive' in terms of user confusion/disgruntlement than simply leaving GIMP branded as.. GIMP.

I'd also like to mention that I find the iceweasel/icecat/shiretoko/minefield/firefox thing quite confusing. It seems kind of useful in an abstract sense (minefield is .. dangerous, iceweasel is strictly FOSS,..). There is significant differentiation of mascots happening, though, unlike what you seem to be suggesting.

Rebranding could be automatic, but it couldn't IMO be simply a matter of substituting text strings as you suggest with your 'configure option' idea.
You would need to also have a different mascot, and consequently regeneration of images would be needed (using a set of unbranded screenshots + a set of mascot images).

It just occurred to me: the 'text substitution' would need to rewrite PO files in order for I18N to function correctly.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Brendan wrote:

All the above comprise a significant factor in why forks are regarded, at best, as a necessary evil. All forks dilute branding, which introduces user confusion and repels potential users.

I think it's incorrect to say it repels potential users and leave it at that. It will also just as likely ATTRACT new users who were put off by the lame name.

That's speculative. We know from past software history that what I described actually happens.
(I'm not opposed to a rebranding. I just think that it would need to be done a) really thoroughly and carefully, b) in cooperation with GIMP developers, and c) released with very calculated timing. And also that such a rebranding is very far from trivial to achieve.)

Call it the Gnu IMP.

This has to be facetiousness, doesn't it? In what parallel universe do you live in, that people will not simplify 'Gnu IMP' down to 'gIMP'/'GIMP'? For that matter, how is 'GIMP' (which may be considered offensive by people who've seen Pulp Fiction, or
by disabled people) better than gIMP (which may be considered offensive by religious nutcases)? It seems to me that there are far more people in the latter category.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:15 AM, David Gowers wrote:

Call it the Gnu IMP.

This has to be facetiousness, doesn't it?

What about "FreeMI" ? standing for "Freedom to Manipulate Images"? *if* the GTK people want to rename accordingly, even that would sound nice "FreeTK"

Incidentally, I like Stephen's 'Wilber/ Wilber Image Editor' suggestion (in another related thread). I'm envisioning someone using the latest GIT version because they *have* to be up-to-date with the newest stuff, the program crashing and destroying their work, and they cry 'Nooooo! WIEEEEEEEEEEE?' :D

(I do genuinely like that suggestion, just to be clear)

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Laxminarayan Kamath wrote:

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:15 AM, David Gowers wrote:

Call it the Gnu IMP.

This has to be facetiousness, doesn't it?

What about "FreeMI" ? standing for "Freedom to Manipulate Images"? *if* the GTK people want to rename accordingly, even that would sound nice "FreeTK"

Oh... wow.

Almost 8 years ago to the day, a Slashdot user in a comment proclaimed 'Vorbis is the stupidest name ever given to a piece of software. it should have a kick-ass cutting edge name like FreeMP3!".

A great deal of labor, a great deal of love and even more time went into the Gimp. I should think it common courtesey that the parents get to name the child and it's a bit rude to even bring it up otherwise. Besides, you're at leat 15 years late. This baby's in high school.

Monty

This thread makes me want to draw Wilber in spandex and some cuffs and pehaps Gegl with a whip ;)... too bad it would be going too far to make something like that a dev splash.

--Alexia

In case the "no name change" policy is ever dropped, I have a suggestion for the new name:

Perfect Image Manipulation Program

It should fix all the problems :)

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM, John B wrote:

IMO this would be a valid reason for a name change. Has that ever been considered?

Search the archives - this has been discussed to death... and there will be no name change.

Chris
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On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Jakub Friedl wrote:

In case the "no name change" policy is ever dropped, I have a suggestion for the new name:

Perfect Image Manipulation Program

It should fix all the problems :)

Indeed! Lets make it one better. Home&Office Perfect Image Manipulation Progam

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:59:28AM +1030, David Gowers wrote:

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:41 AM, vabijou2 wrote:

So just because some old farts in Scotland may have good associations with the word, you think that renders the rest of the English-speaking world's interpretation silly?  %-|

Personally, I think the question you just asks renders you silly (and arrogant) for presuming to speak for 'the rest of the English-speaking world'. This is an issue on which opinions *are* divided within 'the English-speaking world'.
I personally have never seen the movie 'Pulp Fiction' on which the interpretation of GIMP as offensive seems to come, and while I agree that 'Pulp Fiction' is fairly famous, I believe it's rather America-centric to assume every English speaker holds that association.

Yeah, for the rest of the world, GIMP is just an acronim (I'm italian) and a perfect one.

please don't worry about the name...

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 09:22 +0200, Alexia Death wrote:

This thread makes me want to draw Wilber in spandex and some cuffs and pehaps Gegl with a whip ;)... too bad it would be going too far to make something like that a dev splash.

Why would that go too far? Please go ahead!

regards, --mitch

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:19:57 -0400, Jakub Friedl wrote:

In case the "no name change" policy is ever dropped, I have a suggestion for the new name:

Perfect Image Manipulation Program

It should fix all the problems :)

Can't wait for the next day comments after this name change, when some English-speaking peoples will request a new name change because PIMP will be offending for their part of the world, etc. :)

(1. Perfect program ? I don't believe there is such thing.) (2. Being a non-English speaking person and with no need to consult the English wiktionary, for me GIMP is only a (fine) name like any other name.)
(3. Weird thing happens when people have nothing to do.)

Cristi

Have you looked at the meanings of the word "pimp"? If no, you will really be surprised.

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:19:57 -0400, Jakub Friedl wrote:

In case the "no name change" policy is ever dropped, I have a suggestion for the new name:

Perfect Image Manipulation Program

It should fix all the problems :)

With respect,
Alexander Rabtchevich

You've somehow missed the emoticon at the end of my post... But your reaction makes me want to officialy announce this name change exactly 154 days from now... :D

2009/10/29 Cristian Secar?

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:19:57 -0400, Jakub Friedl wrote:

In case the "no name change" policy is ever dropped, I have a suggestion for the new name:

Perfect Image Manipulation Program

It should fix all the problems :)

Can't wait for the next day comments after this name change, when some English-speaking peoples will request a new name change because PIMP will be offending for their part of the world, etc. :)

(1. Perfect program ? I don't believe there is such thing.) (2. Being a non-English speaking person and with no need to consult the English wiktionary, for me GIMP is only a (fine) name like any other name.)
(3. Weird thing happens when people have nothing to do.)

Cristi

-- Cristian Secar?
http://www.secarica.ro/
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On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Stephen Griffiths wrote:

If the argument for keeping the name is seriously that the project branding is valuable, why don't we write that in the FAQ?

Purely coincidentally it's been in the FAQ for years.

Alexandre

2009/10/29 Alexander Rabtchevich wrote:

 Have you looked at the meanings of the word "pimp"? If no, you will really be surprised.

Just in case, "irony" has very little to do with iron and metals :)

Alexandre

Stephen Griffiths wrote:

... elision by Patrick
The name GIMP is not so invaluable that it cannot be changed, also there is a massive number of outsiders who find the name truly unappealing, I do not hear the raw of the people saying they love the name.

You can hear my raw here. I love the name. It appeals to me as a geek (I'm sure that you really hate THAT word, so much more fraught with ill-meaning than gimp), as an artist, and as an open source advocate. All of those things make me a bit of an outsider in the world, but an insider here. I think that the gimp is made for people like me, and we like the name. Inside any of those communities, the work GIMP means a hell of a good open source image editing program, and there ARE no negative connotations. It's just the way that we geeks find it amusing that there's another meaning of geek that would have us do strange to chickens. We know what we mean, and if outsiders don't get it, they'll either remain outsiders, or eventually become cool and THEN they'll get it. GIMP has panache. (N.B. I don't mean the meaning of panache that signifies a bunch of feathers or a plume on a helmet. I know some people get caught up in the idea that any possible definition of a word must be considered when communicating, but that's way too much trouble, and as someone earlier correctly suggested that I meant to say, silly.)

Patrick

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 15:27 -0700, Patrick Horgan wrote:

Stephen Griffiths wrote:

... elision by Patrick
The name GIMP is not so invaluable that it cannot be changed, also there is a massive number of outsiders who find the name truly unappealing, I do not hear the raw of the people saying they love the name.

You can hear my raw here. I love the name. It appeals to me as a geek (I'm sure that you really hate THAT word, so much more fraught with ill-meaning than gimp)

You are not making noise without being prompted.

I didn't say I hated it (but there are those who do hate it), I just stated that it was not clever. Wordplay has for many years been considered the highest form of humour, it has only become less accepted as such in recent history. I still accept wordplay to be high humour, in this case I think GIMP is not very clever.

there ARE no negative connotations.

gimp and GIMP. UPPERCASE and lowercase. I doubt you needed that explained to you, but you did seem to play dumb there.

We know what we mean

Is it wrong that a language be used for communication between more than a small number of people?

or eventually become cool

Is that what people think when they look this way "those guys are cool". 'Cool' is a social system only relevant in high-school.

GIMP has panache. (N.B. I don't mean the meaning of panache that signifies a bunch of feathers or a plume on a helmet. I know some people get caught up in the idea that any possible definition of a word
must be considered when communicating, but that's way too much trouble,
and as someone earlier correctly suggested that I meant to say, silly.)

I am glad you found some really sick definition of a word to make your point. My question is why didn't you just choose a simpler and more descriptive word, a word that would not require 4 lines of explanation to avoid confusion.

You should attempt to communicate in a simpler manner, because it looks to me like this could have been said as "You have a point of view, boo, that is stupid".

well, till next time, Stephen.

I really mistook the what Patrick was saying here (of which he was kind enough to make me aware of privately), I apologise for reacting so quickly. I think I have already said what I meant to say in the first two posts and will take the time to bow out from any further participation.

regards,
Stephen.

Same thing happend to me when I announced on a forum I created a program named RIOT (an acronym of Radical Image Optimization Tool). Some people pointed that the name is not good. Quote: "The name is not good. It conveys the impression that the program will make a right mess of users' images." Meanwhile, the program became quite popular and now nobody says the name is not good :) It is simply a name and people learned to accept (and like it).

My conclusions are: 1. too late to change it
2. let the parents choose the name

Regards, Lucian

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:43 AM, Brendan wrote:

On Thursday 29 October 2009, you wrote:

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Brendan wrote:

All the above comprise a significant factor in why forks are regarded, at best, as a necessary evil. All forks dilute branding, which introduces user confusion and repels potential users.

I think it's incorrect to say it repels potential users and leave it at that. It will also just as likely ATTRACT new users who were put off by the lame name.

That's speculative. We know from past software history that what I

The extent is speculative, the same as you. I know an entire office who said they would use it if it changed the name, so it's not nearly as speculative as you think.

Fair enough.

Call it the Gnu IMP.

This has to be facetiousness, doesn't it?

Most of what I say is at least slightly facetious. If they simplify it themselves, that's their problem, and not something that is super-obvious.

If we look at the way the photoshop family of products are abbreviated by people(PS7/CE4/Elements),and GNU projects (bc, bash, tar, Octave, etc), just plain IMP is reasonably likely. (in fact, GIMP is an oddity in that the GNU is actually included in the acronym.. if it were more canonical, people would already be calling it Gnu IMP or IMP). That's fair enough.. IMP *is* a better name (and people who object to it on religious grounds probably are terminally humorless), we just should expect it to still manage to be taken as objectionable.

Actually, I'm in favor of your proposition now, you've convinced me. Gnu IMP is 'backwards compatible' as you say, more in line with other GNU projects' naming, and could result in image* improvement in the future.

As long as it's not a fork -- that is, the renaming would need to be official.

* The kind that doesn't have pixels in it :) but, well, the other kind too I suppose :)

A list of files that would need modification:

HACKING NEWS
gimpui.pc.in
[a few utility scripts like gimp-zip] [most files with 'gimp' in the filename would need renaming. that is

1686 files to rename]

[All enumerations which include 'GIMP' in them] [.gimp-2.x would need to be migrated to .imp-2.x .. and then symlink .gimp-2.x to that]
[On Linux, create a symlink 'gimp' pointing at 'imp' (or something like that)] [We'd need to deliberately avoid changing the XCF and rcfiles format, which refer to such object types as 'gimp-image-grid', 'GimpDeviceInfo', 'gimp-channel-list'. Note: some rcfiles include 'gimp' in the names of objects, others do not. I don't fully understand why.]
[themes would need to be updated to refer to 'imp-*' widget classes rather than 'gimp-*' widget classes]

All active/'pending' branches would need to be updated to match (this would be mostly trivial, I expect situations where new enumerations or files were introduced to be more involved)

This would be quite time-sensitive in order to maintain a functional GIT repository -- it would need to compile successfully again within 3 days. So it might take a small team just to complete this. Then the documentation would need to be synchronized with the change (screenshots, textual references to 'GIMP') fairly promptly after that -- which is IMO quite hairy due to I18N concerns.

All *gimp* pdb functions would have to be deprecated in preference to *imp* versions.

.po files would all need to be updated, however this would not need to be done all in a lump but could be spread over time.

All the above would be best done at the beginning of a development cycle (eg. when 2.8 has just been released). It would be relatively free of the potential for invisible bugs -- most problems would show up as compilation errors.

I believe the above is the minimum required to seriously do that change. Though of course we could begin with the user-visible things (binary names, and strings) and progress to the developer side (filenames and enumerations).. it would still be vital for it's success to quickly do the migration on the developer side, which is the majority of the work involved.

I can see why GIMP developers would want to avoid such a thing. I do believe that the migration wouldn't require more than a very basic understanding of the GIMP code base. What it would really need is a) a great deal of organization and b) an active and moderately large team. (doing only the user-visible side is a possibility.. but this may result in confusion where eg. a PDB function is named gimp-* where the program says it is 'IMP')

PS. 'The GIMP' is anachronistic AFAIK -- GIMP (no 'the') is canonical currently. PPS. I believe (haven't tested, my GIMP GIT clone is not in working order currently), that the
option '--program-transform-name=s/gimp/imp/g' to configure would result in appropriately named binaries (imp-2.7 etc)

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 12:40 PM, David Gowers wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:43 AM, Brendan wrote: A list of files that would need modification: ... SINP LONG LIST...

And all of GIMP code. 98% functions are prefixed as gimp. You can try to grep for gimp on gimp source tree. Forget it. Some English speakers discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

if it were more canonical, people would already be calling it Gnu IMP or IMP). That's fair enough.. IMP *is* a better name (and people who object to it on religious grounds probably are terminally humorless),

Actually I think there are quite a few people who would be more open to using the Gimp if the development community were screened for religious preferences. I don't see why it's OK to offend the Christian users, but not ok to offend just the 'prudes'.

We could fork the project to only include Christian developers, thus... uh... you all *are* getting this is sarcasm, right?

Sorry, commenting in this thread is like eating Skittles!

Monty

I honestly don't see the problem people have with the word.

My school-age daughter came home talking about using gimp in school.

I thought great, a progressive schoolboard willing to use open source software.

Alas, she was referring to gimp, the plastic craft lace. Also known as boondoggle (which in itself has negative connotations) http://www.crazy4crafts.org/2006/08/15/plastic-lacing-gimp-or-boondoggle-scoubidou-designs-craft-ideas-and-web-sites/

If an elementary school doesn't have problems with a word because of other possible definitions of that word, then I can't see why anyone else should.

A name is a name is a name. Regardless of past cleverness or intended wordplay, it is what it is, "Gimp". It is the name. Deal with it.

-Rob A>

Monty Montgomery wrote:

Actually I think there are quite a few people who would be more open to using the Gimp if the development community were screened for religious preferences. I don't see why it's OK to offend the Christian users, but not ok to offend just the 'prudes'.

We could fork the project to only include Christian developers, thus... uh... you all *are* getting this is sarcasm, right?

We can't afford to offend anyone, so we need everyone to be Christian, Wiccan, liberal conservatives, and oh, yes, can't offend non-developers, so we need everyone to both be developers and to not be developers. Ok?

Patrick

p.s. I'm ashamed of myself for posting this.

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 09:13:55AM -0400, Monty Montgomery wrote:

We could fork the project to only include Christian developers, thus... uh... you all *are* getting this is sarcasm, right?

Way OT, but speaking of getting in trouble with acronyms, I remember years ago at law school when someone founded a "Christian Legal Association" there, and they would post bulletins on the walls. Somebody (hmmm, wonder who?...) started posting bulletins about upcoming meetings of the PLO - Pagan Legal Organization.

My 2 cents on the issue; the name doesn't bother me, just as the names of other programs I use every day such as emacs, mutt, lynx etc do not bother me. You gotta love mutt's bug list on the manpage ("Mutts don't have bugs; they have fleas.")

Scott Swanson

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Scott wrote:

Way OT, but speaking of getting in trouble with acronyms, I remember years ago at law school when someone founded a "Christian Legal Association" there, and they would post bulletins on the walls. Somebody (hmmm, wonder who?...) started posting bulletins about upcoming meetings of the PLO - Pagan Legal Organization.

OK - so I was determined to ignore this thread, but since we're getting way OT: some years ago a new Christian academy appeared in our city. Unfortunately, they named this institution "First Assembly of God School". Hilarity ensued, in the form of football uniforms and school buses emblazoned with the acronym.

The name was promptly changed.

Chris

Alexia Death wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 12:40 PM, David Gowers wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:43 AM, Brendan wrote: A list of files that would need modification: ... SINP LONG LIST...

And all of GIMP code. 98% functions are prefixed as gimp. You can try to grep for gimp on gimp source tree. Forget it. Some English speakers discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

A note: The end users don't care what the functions are called. Just the name of the binary, the logo, and the title bar.

The discomfort at the name for me has nothing to do with some moral objection. Its about having a product you aren't afraid to advertise. When I start extolling the virtues of open source to my buddies, one of the first three objections I usually get are "but there is no good graphics software like Photoshop." As soon as I say "GIMP," you can see the doubt on their faces, because they associate the word with being weak or lame.

If Mozilla's browser today was name "Mozilla Slug," or "Bloat Browser," how many people do think would be wearing the tee-shirt or showing off the desktop wallpaper?

People keep saying "the original developers named it GIMP" and that is that. Every heard, though, of the original name of the Linux OS? Torvalds wanted it called "Freaxs." Fortunately, though, the name Linux stuck, and even Linus admitted this was better.

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Christopher Howard wrote:

People keep saying "the original developers named it GIMP" and that is that. Every heard, though, of the original name of the Linux OS? Torvalds wanted it called "Freaxs." Fortunately, though, the name Linux stuck, and even Linus admitted this was better.

Furthermore, if the original developers still prefer the name GIMP, they are entitled to their own fork!

Rockwalrus

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Christopher Howard wrote:

Alexia Death wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 12:40 PM, David Gowers wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:43 AM, Brendan wrote: A list of files that would need modification: ... SINP LONG LIST...

And all of GIMP code. 98% functions are prefixed as gimp. You can try to grep for gimp on gimp source tree. Forget it. Some English speakers  discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

A note: The end users don't care what the functions are called. Just the name of the binary, the logo, and the title bar.

That's sort of beside the point. Having the developers see things differently than the users disincentivizes people to be both users and developers (which is definitely the optimal choice for ongoing improvement of software quality). If the program is called imp but all the functions are gimp_, that introduces cognitive dissonance (which amounts to confusion+annoyance in this case) which discourages the users from developing.

The discomfort at the name for me has nothing to do with some moral objection. Its about having a product you aren't afraid to advertise. When I start extolling the virtues of open source to my buddies, one of the first three objections I usually get are "but there is no good graphics software like Photoshop." As soon as I say "GIMP," you can see the doubt on their faces, because they associate the word with being weak or lame.

If Mozilla's browser today was name "Mozilla Slug," or "Bloat Browser," how many people do think would be wearing the tee-shirt or showing off the desktop wallpaper?

The difference being that slug or bloat are not narrowly-scoped cultural references: almost everyone knows what a slug is, and a majority of computer users end up understanding what bloat is. By comparison, the first time I heard of gimp meaning anything -- except, well, the program we're talking about! .. was a thread here about this very same subject. Others have expressed similar sentiments. You're acting like 'gimp' is a universal English cultural artefact. It's not (it's mainly an American one).

It seems to me that such threads simply manufacture means of objection for trolls who don't want to adopt something new, because it's new.

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 13:06 +0200, Alexia Death wrote:

Some English speakers
discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

These words make me squirm.
fag - a pile of sticks (secondary meaning, rarely used) nigger - a person from a poor background (secondary meaning, almost unheard of)
chink - a chink in a chain (primary meaning) speck - a speck of dust (primary meaning)

I am sure you have words in your native language, which in general function to isolate someone for being different or not being 'normal'. Do these become any less uncomfortable because someone says they mean it in a different way?

Stephen Griffiths wrote:

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 13:06 +0200, Alexia Death wrote:

Some English speakers
discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

These words make me squirm.
fag - a pile of sticks (secondary meaning, rarely used) nigger - a person from a poor background (secondary meaning, almost unheard of)
chink - a chink in a chain (primary meaning) speck - a speck of dust (primary meaning)

speck doesn't have an offensive tone to it. However, "spic" may depending upon context.

On 10/29/09, Laxminarayan Kamath wrote:

What about "FreeMI" ? standing for "Freedom to Manipulate Images"? *if* the GTK people want to rename accordingly, even that would sound nice "FreeTK"

Whether people are serious about this or not, I am going to revise my suggestion.
FreeMI sound like "Free me, I am not currently free" instead, we can add the d after Free from Freedom, and make it "FreedMI" as in "This programme Freed me!" the TK name also would sound nice "FreedTK".

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 1:47 AM, Stephen Griffiths wrote:

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 13:06 +0200, Alexia Death wrote:

Some English speakers
discomfort at the name is getting a bit ridiculous IMHO.

These words make me squirm.
fag - a pile of sticks (secondary meaning, rarely used) nigger - a person from a poor background (secondary meaning, almost unheard of)
chink - a chink in a chain (primary meaning) speck - a speck of dust (primary meaning)

Words are neither good or bad. Its all about context. White youth call each other niggers and there are crowds where fag generically means mate. Language is transformable. Use transforms language all the time.

Do these become any less uncomfortable because someone says they mean it in a different way?

Yes. There is a supermodel named Tyra. That pretty much means dick in estonian. But we dont go arund demanding her to change her name to allow her on TV, we have a chuckle and move on.

i'm glad that gimp developers prefer to spend their time on improving the application rather than discussing and implementing 'improvements' to it's name.

it's a darn good program. before i switched over to linux about one year ago i thought i couldn't live without photoshop. now i wouldn't use PS if it was ported to linux, because i like the GIMP much better. i'd use it if it was called "PIMP," "SHRIMP," or anything else you can possibly imagine.

as far as i'm concerned, anybody who thinks the name is more important than the application is welcome to use something that sounds & looks better to them. people who care about important things won't base their decisions on idle speculation what a name might mean in one culture or language group or the other.

--
phani.

On 10/31/09, Christopher Howard wrote:

that. Every heard, though, of the original name of the Linux OS? Torvalds wanted it called "Freaxs." Fortunately, though, the name Linux stuck, and even Linus admitted this was better.

For reasons far beyond human imagination this is all but a valid argument, because the choice was made before the 1st public version of kernel was actually published, while GIMP is around for over a decade already.

The question you really have to ask is: will actual GIMP developers agree to work on rebranded GIMP? Because, you see, there are just 3,7 of them. And only Martin (correct me if I'm wrong) once said he wouldn't mind having GIMP rebranded.

Living in a country of 100+ millions of potential users I have no problem advocating GIMP name-wise. But I do have a problem advocating it feature-wise and the last thing I would ever want to see is development stopped because some nois^H vocal people go further than 4th meaning of a word in a dictionary while having a problem understanding what an acronym is. Education does cruel things to people's minds.

Alexandre

On 10/31/2009 09:26 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

The question you really have to ask is: will actual GIMP developers agree to work on rebranded GIMP? Because, you see, there are just 3,7 of them. And only Martin (correct me if I'm wrong) once said he wouldn't mind having GIMP rebranded.

I once did, but that was before I got more involved in the project. I am nowadays against a rebranding. GIMP is a well known project and my belief is that changing the name will be of negligible benefit.

/ Martin