this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Gimp is one of the few FOSS projects with some notoriety outside of tech circles. It, VLC and Linux are possibly the only names I could expect some random person to have heard of. Changing its name would probably torpedo years of work to become seen as a reliable piece of software and send it back to the realm of "software that only people who watch the code repository know about".
And the whole changing the name to avoid offending someone is a losing battle in the first place. According to this thread, "rice" is potentially racist. I had no idea anyone could find "Gimp" offensive, but apparently they can. By this point, it's part of american internet culture to be offended and no word is safe from americans turning it into a slur, dog-whistle, etc etc and advocating that everyone else in the world should stop using it.
The fact that g--p is a slur is not a new thing. It's the equivalent of f----t or r----d for a large number of disabled people, and has been for years. The fact that you did not know this doesn't make it any less true.
Do you honestly believe a name change would vault the project into obscurity? Seems like a quick press release would do it.
When I hear gimp outside of the context of the software, I think of gimp suits. In my area I've never heard gimp used as a slur for disabled people.
I get that there's regional slang and what not, but if every word that offended anyone anywhere was banned, we would have to limit our words to the point of barely being able to communicate.
In my area, depending who you are, a silly term as "goof" is offensive. I almost got beat up for calling a guy one as a joke. Should I petition Disney to rename Goofy?
I'm hearing this point a lot, but it just makes clear that people aren't reading or understanding my other remarks. This isn't a random word that someone decided was offensive. This is a slur that is well known to large number of disabled people. They have been telling us this for some time. You haven't heard it used that way? That's great, but that also doesn't mean that it isn't. You know who does know what slurs are used against them? The people who are targeted by them. I'll bet there are plenty of slurs you haven't heard of that are, in fact, still slurs regardless.
Honestly, I find the name Nathan really offensive.
Are you going to do something about it?
Have you got any real arguments for me?