-84
The problem with GIMP (www.spacebar.news)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
top 42 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] [email protected] 55 points 1 month ago

this is just stupid. like oh my god how dare they to use name thst is also tied to bdsm. it might just be me but I have never thought about the wrong gimp then talking about gnu image manipulation program. also it's an acronym that works

[-] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

My IQ continually dropped while reading this summary and anyone that knows me would tell you that I can't afford that.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Agreed, it's such a poor summary of the article that I can't tell if it's an intentional strawman argument.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think the

it's sometimes said as a derogatory word for people with physical or mental disabilities

part is the problematic one, not the BDSM connotations. imagine if it was named Functional Advanced Graphics Generating Opensource Tool in the 90s and they refused to change the name because "it was different times back then oh and we don't want to sterilise language".

[-] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago

Those points are addressed in the article. It's not an issue for a lot of people, but it's still an issue.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago

Everything is an issue if you try hard enough. Feel free to fork and rename if you’re not happy. You seem to have a lot of time to waste.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago

Going solely by the headline, I was expecting an article about how the developers never fix the well known usability problems compared to Photoshop because they’re expert users and DGAF about appealing to new users.

Instead it’s an article about how developers never fix the well known problem of an offensive name because they like being “edgy” and DGAF about appealing to new users.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

While I understand the author's frustration with the developers not giving as much weight to the (non-contributing) community, the fact is that the developers get to make the final call on this, and they get to use whatever criteria they like.

And there's no definitive answer to whether a name change would be a net positive or negative--a handful of complaints vs brand dilution is a subjective call. And for the number of users, I get the impression that it's not as big of a deal to most people as it is to the author.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Can they just insist it's pronounced like jimp and sidestep the issue? Imgur, .gif, GNOME, GIPHY get to set their own rules on pronunciation.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Pack up lads. We solved it. Back to jimp.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

That's brilliant.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

In my opinion it is its limited suitability for (my) common image editing needs. I.e. add a white text with black border to an image.

But these are my requirements. The developers don't have to cater to them if they don't want to. I in turn can decide to not use the program or add the features I would like to see myself (It's the former for me).

That is the way it is.

Edit: The name gimp was never an issue for me. There are far worse.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

*sigh* not this nonsense again.

GIMP was named after “GNU Image Manipulation Program”

Also this.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

No, it was named after the character, GIMP is a reverse acronym:

It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago
[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Honestly IMP would have been dope

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for.

Gag

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Honestly, this is such a dumb argument. The creators of The GIMP acknowledge that this is a reference to a BDSM kink popularized by Pulp Fiction. Leather bondage masks are probably the first thing most people think of when they hear the word "Gimp".

Yes, it is also a relatively obscure ableist term for someone with a visible physical disability, but this was never what the creators had in mind with the name. Pretty much nobody uses this term anymore.

Just let it be. If you oppose it for being ableist you're just pretending that the name is a reference to something offensive, when it's a well understood fact that it wasn't named after the ableist term. If you oppose it for what the creators named it after, you're basically just kink shaming, and I really don't care if the program is a reference to bondage sex.

Surprisingly people don't constantly rally against LAME, the MP3 media encoder, and liblame is a massively important library for audio processing used by just about every computer in existence. This was deliberately named after the ableist term, and the 'L' in "LAME" stands for "LAME", so they could have used literal any -AME name they wanted, and kept their stupid recursive abbreviation + ironic project name that was so popular at the time (LAME stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder").

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn't old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article's coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn't last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here's an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Then don't use it.

Or fork it and remove all instances of the word. Put the pearls down, you're grinding them to dust.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I assume this article is about how I want to pull my hair out when trying to do anything in that program because everything feels so obtuse and weird and nothing else.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Use Photoshop once and Gimp is ruined forever.

Has nothing to do with the name. I think it's cute and it's an acronym. I know someone that had a disease called DIC - now that's an acronym that someone needs to rethink.

[-] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

Use Photoshop once and Gimp is ruined forever.

This is very much like saying "Use Windows once, and Linux is ruined forever".

Once I actually learned how to use GIMP, I was able to appreciate it. It does things differently than PhotoShop, and, in some cases, I preferred the GIMP way of doing things to PhotoShop. It does take time to learn, though, and you can't just learn PS and then hop onto GIMP and expect to do things the same way.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I believe you. In my experience people I have spoken to that have used both emphasize the intuitive nature of PS use over Gimp use and that is my experience as well. If someone has financial constraints or is unable or unwilling to pirate PS, I would advise patience and practice with GIMP. As someone with a lot of graphic design and photo editing experience, I wouldn't otherwise recommend it though.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

If you're going to make an ancient argument that was dumb af even then you may as well go full GeoCities with animated gifs and shit. HTML5 will let you reimplement and .

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

People are too sensitive today.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Always have been, nowadays it's just easier to hear other people's opinions

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I'm curious whether there's anyone in this thread who is cool with, for instance, Github renaming the default branch name to "main" but thinks GIMP renaming would be woke BS.

For the record, I'm for both changes and and yes I do have a glass case where I keep my downvote collection.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I liked the part where he said that a hard fork was not a solution...and then talks favorably about the name change of OpenOffice to LibreOffice with a fork.

If the developers won't bend to the will of the users, you can't force them. Do what we've always done in that situation: make a fork. I'm sure if it's that important to so many people, it can be done.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a legit app to me. Sounds like some guy’s personal project.

Calling your cool new app “TARD,” for example — and then insisting (with a straight face) that it is simply an acronym and “people should get over it” — is just being stupid and missing the entire point…while failing miserably.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago

I dislike using a slur for disabled people as the name but it's only partially why I stopped using it. Bad cross-platform support, sticking to ancient GTK versions, GNOME-fication of the upcoming 3.0 version, etc. also pushed me away.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago

I stopped using it because of the dev's attitude towards people wanting them to change the name. I switched to Krita

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I stopped using Krita cause it shows a barely SFW upskirt anime picture every time it starts up.
That's way more of an issue than a programs name.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

There's no way that's even remotely an upskirt. WTF

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Still, it's not something I'm comfortable with when my boss is standing behind me.

Picture

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

If you feel uncomfortable with your boss looking at that, you're either not doing the thing you are being paid for or your boss does not know what your work is about.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I haven't even noticed that, it takes a while to open so I do other stuff while it does its thing

this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
-84 points (18.7% liked)

Technology

55938 readers
3288 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS