this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
401 points (98.3% liked)
Open Source
48566 readers
52 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Are they going to upgrade the name as well?
Yeah I think they're going for something more straightforward that describes exactly what it's about
Brushes, Design, Shapes & Multimedia
To avoid confusion: BDSM, the FOSS formerly known as GIMP
I would not feel comfortable looking this up on a work computer.
Did you feel comfortable searching to learn how to use GIMP?
yes
Not at work. Certainly not.
Or: Graphics, Images, Media & Print
Or else it will be a sub-module.
This would really mess up search results
Yeah, now I'm just gonna get screenshots of this app.
nice one
That would produce so many priceless weirded out faces when you tell someone you love GIMP and use that acronym and they don't know what you are referring to.
Don't be silly. There's no better name than GIMP.
Green Is My Pepper!
Why should they change the name just for the vanity of Americans who have a dual meaning for the word, and make it difficult for the whole rest of the world to find tutorials and documentation going back decades?
have you not met many Americans ?
they're also big into CBT with their GIMP, or their therapist. i can never remember which one
It's not just awkward for Americans, but for the entire English speaking world - at least 470 million people. How can anyone seriously recommend a business use a program called GIMP? It is a massive hurdle to adoption in the corporate world. They should change the name, or at least create a business-oriented alias.
I'm in the UK. I use it as my primary image editor on my work computers. Should we be avoiding using LaTeX too because in a different context it's a kink thing?
It just seems such a weird thing to be prudish about in this day and age. English words are regularly contextual and in a business environment why would one go to the NSFW context as default?
I mean my business has no problem using it here in the motherland of the English language...?
Any time we talk to a client about it they are just happy to hear that we're using software that doesn't ingest their work into AI, crash in the middle of consultations, and produces working files that will be usable forever.
I do wonder how much of this is the seeming aversion to context that a subset of Americans seem to have. The meaning of words varies by context, that's like, a normal thing in English. If I said in a meeting that I'd been "pissing about the office whilst waiting for John to be done in his other meeting", that doesn't mean I'd been urinating on the carpets!
English is diverse language and each regional English have their own offensive world that have different meaning in different English speaking area.
Maybe you should meet more Indian English speaker and Singaporean English speaker. Heck, Australian English invent various offensive word.
So in order to make it less awkward for ~500M people, we should make it more awkward for the rest of the 7.8B people.
How would changing the name make it more awkward? Giving up a huge market for no reason other than old nerds crying about a change.
Everyone knows it by that name, even in non english speaking countries.
They themselves gave a good explanation. They'd lose brand recognition, they'd expose the name to scammers using it to sell or distribute their own software, and years of tutorials, guides and books would instantly be harder to find and outdated.
It makes no sense to give up all that, and to force such a change on the whole world, just because some speakers of a single language don't like it.
That's a US defaultism issue
It was created in the US and named in specific reference to the offensive meaning of the word, so I would say that makes it pretty relevant.
That means shit for FOSS. AND the Evil Empire is dying.
Why is a sexual term automatically offensive?
Being sexual doesn’t automatically make it offensive, it just makes it unprofessional. As software that is seeking widespread adoption, its acceptance in professional environments matters. I could make a program called Skrotum if I thought it was funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised when people are hesitant to recommend it to others because of the name I chose.
What makes it offensive is that it’s a slur for handicapped people. That’s the origin of the BDSM term and the use that was popularized by the character in Pulp Fiction that was specifically referenced by the creators of GIMP.
I get the second part, but I think the first part is just an US thing. While I feel that we are still terribly repressed over here, something being sexual (especially when it's just a double entendre) doesn't always and immediately make it unprofessional in Germany, which I feel applies more so in other parts of Europe.
Because he lives in a fucked up puritan place.
Why? It describes succinctly what the app does.
I suppose the association with limping is a bit unfortunate. Although GIMP is an acronym.
The fact that a particular sub-culture has its own slang meaning for the word is irrelevant.
No it's not. It's very relevant - it's the reason I've never recommended the software to anyone outside of close friends.
Wouldn't it be easier to recommend it and if they give you a look about the name you act like you've no idea what they're talking about?
This comes up every time GIMP is mentioned. To be honest, outside US and UK (and few others) for the rest of the world the word GIMP has no negative meaning (no meaning at all). So, yeah, maybe who cares about the name? Well, change it if it's really a problem. But, is it really a problem?
Fair point is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) doesn't sound as a reasonable acronym. I would maybe find a better acronym, but changing the name itself feels like changing the name of the town of Bra in Italy or the town of Fuck in Austria, or why not, even the town of Love in Sweden... Good luck if we need to only find and use names that do not offend anybody in any language of the world.
Krita, the main FOSS competitor to GIMP, feels a much worse sounding name to me. By the way, i read GIMP with a soft G (like a j) not even as English speakers do pronounce it.
Honestly I think some people just want to be offended. "Oh I can't use this in class because of the name" is complete nonsense. If the faculty are going to immediately assume you're doing weird sex things with the kids then you've got bigger communication problems.
If we're considering just the US, Canada, UK, NZ and Australia, that's at least 470 million people for whom the name is problematic. As an enthusiastic Australian user, there's no way I would recommend a program called GIMP to my colleagues, let alone higher-ups.
The acronym was chosen as a reference to a character in Pulp Fiction.
And just India has a population of 1.4 billion people, and it's a single country.
in corporate environments i've worked in in aussie for decades, the worst you can expect is a chuckle at the name.
yes, i'm sure there are more prudish organisations.
but it's 100% wrong to equate all english speaking nations to the US dip shitery.
getting the average graphic designer to consider anything other then adobe is like getting IT to consider anything other then MS... that is holding adoption back far more then anything to do with the name.
GYMP? 💪✨🤭
Is anyone interested in having GIMP with another name doing the work to make that happen?
@SkavarSharraddas @Vosh @AllNewTypeFace Actually, there's been "official" development on that front: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-gimp-will-you-change-it
There was a fork some time ago with that intention, but I think they ended up ceasing the project