Whether it is intended or not, does not excuse the name being offensive and therefore awful for them to use and stupid to refuse to change. This is not like they weren’t told immediately. They were informed about this issue in the 1990s so they could have easily change the name back then to and this would have never become an issue. This decision of refusal for decades shows a big sign to everyone that might consider contributing that doing so would be a waste of time.
Society has not moved on. The word has been used for only 2 things in the past 3 decades. The first definition listed in the links you gave is something I have never heard it used for… The 2 things I have heard it used for is the insult and the pulp fiction version.
Both of these variants are incredibly stupid to have associated to an application because it forces people away including people who arent even offended.
Yes because having respect towards others is a character value and refusing to change the name after learning that it is an insult to a group of people shows a lack of character. They should want to change it because there is no value in it being that name.
This is an irrelevant thing. They only accomplished this because the project existed before ALL of those search engines existed. They could have accomplished the same thing with literally any name whatsoever. In fact, without the stigma of what they did choose, they could have done even better.
The complaints people have about “political correctness” not being a reason to change the name . . . being a decent person to other people is a reason to change it. There is absolutely zero (0%) value in having the project be named this. It not only is an insult, has a vulgar variation, it’s also just a terrible name in the first place.
There are thousands of reasons to change the name and respect for entire group of fellow human beings happens to be one of them but if thats not enough then the fact that with the GIMP name, the project will sit forever in a perpetual professional purgatory.
The pathetic thing is really the steadfast refusal to change it even when the problematic piece is just the initial for “Program”. It’s like they couldnt come up with a synonym for that like “Software” for example which would make it GIMS and that would even have a cool value of brandability with referencing gems.
There are many reasons to change the name but showing respect to a group of people should have been enough.
Purely for clarification of my angle, a good example is Ace Venture Pet Detective. An extremely popular 90’s movie that had a room of people vomitting over the presence of a transgender which made close to $200 million. Words like “gay” were used almost exclusively as degorgatory back then. Imagine pitching that script today.
What I meant by “we’ve moved on” is that. It isn’t that we’ve changed the strict definitions of words, it’s that they’re rapidly losing their derogatory power and are in constant decline. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. To have a society show indifference to a word isn’t just about respect, it’s that the accusation is considered so meaningless no defense is needed.
I might be thinking too far ahead but if the context isn’t derogatory I try to emulate that end goal beyond respect.
I’m glad for the opportunity to talk about it because I may have this totally wrong and discussion helps air things out. What everyone’s said i’ll be considering and if all we’re disagreeing over is the best way to be respectful that’s a damn good place to be.
We definitely agree on showing respect and i’d add it’s always worth airing on caution even considering my thoughts above.
Is GIMP’s terrible name disrespectful? Yes, but only if we conclude context is irrelevant to language. That’s a widespread debate right now so I can’t fault anyone falling on either side.
I’ll back up though and pose the question if GIMP should be putting it’s contributors in a position where they’d need to die on that hill. Of all the things to grind in their heels it’s not the greatest given the bucket full of alternative reasons for name change least of all that it’s terrible.
I think a lot of this comes from having lived 20 yrs near San Francisco and seeing gay go from meaning not right in the head to being utterly excised of negative meaning.
Witnessing the power of that transition compared to failures in omission it’s hard to not see that as an answer to all derogatory terms. If we have to attach GIMP to an unintended meaning then GIMP means grit.
I disagree that its only in this context. The reason it is disrespectful is because they were informed decades ago that it was derogatory towards this group and there’s zero value in the application using the term Program vs Software which would eliminate that issue.
Lack of knowledge does not constitute disrespect. The problem is that the GIMP team may have not known in the beginning but they were informed very early in the life of the project, in the 90s, and still chose to not care and ignore that group of people. . . this is where it becomes disrespectful. They know and don’t care, that is where the disrespect lies.
or in my interpretation the unintended meaning in the name is self sabotage.
I read an article last year about many started doing similar to Humble Bundle with the “Pay what you want” scheme (even a ZERO amount). They indicated it was bringing in more money than merely asking for donations.
Proprietary software is needed if Linux is going to go more mainstream. People use certain applications, and would expect them to be in Linux if they are going to use it.
Examples of this are Spotify, Skype, Viber. All these are in Linux, just Viber has issues installing.
Very interesting discussion about proprietary software on Linux. I think it being that hard to spell is definitely a negative from the word go. Open and Source are both words I can spell without thinking about on most days
Seriously though, I think there are good open source solutions for everything I need for personal use - except for one app: Kindle reader from Amazon. It’s the only app I ever switch out of Linux for. Do I wish they’d port that over to Linux? Most certainly I do. I’d never have to run that other thing which just isn’t anywhere near as good at all, in my opinion.
When it comes to working in industry, too often the established standards so far are proprietary and for compatibility have to be resorted to. Unfortunately MS Office and MS Visual Studio spring to mind. Maybe I’m not up-to-date on the latest builds, but I think even stalwarts like LibreOffice and Mozilla Firefox expect to be built using MS tools when compiling the Windows versions. Something definitely seems a bit off there to me…
I agree on points about funding. If we love open source so much, really we should be contributing financially as able; surely this would be a great incentive for the developers. Maybe money isn’t their main motivation, but everyone has bills to pay and I think helping with that is a great step. Just my thoughts.
