I am not a friend of Alan Horkan, nor do I have any association with him whatsoever, but I find that blocking him from speaking about GIMP's name is unacceptable. I have looked over some of his past posts and have not found them to be insulting, abusive, or inappropriate. As a matter of fact, I think he has (for the most part) politely stated his opinion and posted in reply to others and not simply in order to keep this topic going. I would not expect him to drop the topic if people continue to respond to him and say things that don't make sense to him, I imagine you would do the same. The topic is clearly of interest to other people, who have continued the topic as he has. Now it's possible he is the type of person who is content to argue indefinitely about a topic without any thought of the consequences, but that is yet to be proven AND requires the participation of someone else. Alan does not appear to be a ranter (at least on this list) and he didn't bring it up. In fact he a useful and frequent contributer who responds to people's questions in a polite and helpful way.

GIMP was nothing but a name for me for years, until someone mentioned the "crippled" definition, and I discovered others as well. Gimp's various definitions are disturbing to me, and the developers are clearly aware of these definitions as demonstrated by the bug report Alan referred to (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160890). The developers are not bothered, apparently, and simply think it's funny. Is it wrong to suggest that the attitude of the developers is not totally "the name doesn't have a derogatory meaning to most people and should therefore stay the same" and that perhaps there is this aspect as well "who cares about those associations, they are funny and they don't bother me, why are you making a big deal out of it"?

Now I understand why changing the name at this juncture is not a wise idea, but I do NOT understand why this discussion is considered ridiculous nor do I understand why developers attack those who ultimately suggest that a patch be accepted to allow simple name changes. You may not like it, but it is not a stupid request. Personally I distrust extremes, such as "A product name that has any possible negative meanings should automatically be changed" or the opposite "Unless it offends the majority of the users (with solid proof), we should not think of changing a product name" I am leaning towards a name change myself, and am thinking it's the most productive thing to do considering the longterm and GIMP's future, but am not certain about this and respect and understand arguments to the contrary. The most positive thing I have heard so far is the suggestion that GIMP will help discourage negative usage of that word, but the developers (to whom we are all very grateful for their work) don't seem to be supporting this initiative by the keeping the above mentioned bug open. How does that make sense?

There is no reason Alan should be blocked, and if you intend to moderate topics, than ban all messages regarding the topic, not just individuals who are not being abusive.

Ben W.