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Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

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Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#81

Post by jrm4 »

lynndotpy wrote: post #77
mikolajw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Is this derogatory or offensive?" is a basic localization question that is constantly asked in many languages. Yes, including Arabic. While it is pragmatic to chose new names to be appealing to members of dominant societies (I do that too), it is problematic when dominant groups view themselves as entitled to that, which is the case here, and which is why we have this discussion. >The intent was offense. First, I a…

> problematic when dominant groups view themselves as entitled to that, which is the case here That is not what is happening here. > There was no suggestion there that he wanted to upset others. As someone else pointed out, that's a misunderstanding of the interview. As I've said several times, the GIMP is named after the full-body sex garment. (It's just an unfortunate thing that the word is also a slur for someone…

Exactly. As I think about it, I believe we have a pretty good thought experiment. What if "Audacity" (a program that's doing pretty good that IMHO actually also has a pretty crappy UI) was called, like "flatulence" or "Impotence?" I doubt it would be sitting on the 100 million ish downloads it has today.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#82

Post by Koshkin »

I see a huge problem with Latin alphabet (with or without modifications) being shared among different languages is that it is almost never transliterated from one such language to another (I think the Baltic and the Slavs may still be doing that), which can make foreign names look like something imagined by a low-key LLM. How am I supposed to say 'Andrzei Chrząszcz' or, for an easier one, say, 'Buôn Ma Thuột.'

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#83

Post by mikolajw »

DonHopkins wrote: post #72
mikolajw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Is this derogatory or offensive?" is a basic localization question that is constantly asked in many languages. Yes, including Arabic. While it is pragmatic to chose new names to be appealing to members of dominant societies (I do that too), it is problematic when dominant groups view themselves as entitled to that, which is the case here, and which is why we have this discussion. >The intent was offense. First, I a…

mikolajw> I am not aware of any evidence that there was an intent to offend. The only source for etymology I know here is an old interview with one of the original developers where he said that he blended the words GNU and Image Manipulation Program, and soon afterwards realized that he heard that word before in a film. That's wrong on every count. The primary source is Peter Mattis' own words in the GIMP Gazette int…

Thanks for correcting me, I should have read the interview more carefully.

>That's not how you title software. You don't say "The Photoshop" or "The EMACS."

Nitpick: The Sims, The WELL, TheFacebook are all attestable. But yeah, fair.

>The number one association most of the population of Earth have with the word "GIMP" is:

>Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD:

I suppose that here you didn't mean that most of the population of Earth watched and understood the English version of Pulp Fiction, or that the majority of people in the world will associate the word "gimp" with anything else than the graphics editor (certainly neither would be true), but that the second most-common association among all anglophones taken together after the GIMP editor itself is the Gimp character from Pulp Fiction.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#84

Post by jrm4 »

as1mov wrote: post #12
jrm4 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

If the dev team had a nickel for every time someone complained about the name, there would have enough money by now to fund the development of a UI revamp. Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...

Audacity makes me think that UI isn't the real problem.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#85

Post by InsideOutSanta »

as1mov wrote: post #51
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they want to do a full UI revamp? My impression is that a lot of people in the gimp ecosystem are happy to be aggressively unwelcoming to a broader audience. They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They call then "snowflakes" and "SJWs" and are gleeful when they fail to make any kinds of improvements. Some of these people can be…

> They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They will probably not attack people who want to fix these issues, but only those who leave drive-by one liner low effort comments about the UI.

They do attack people who want to fix the issues. See Glimpse as an example.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#86

Post by jrm4 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #85
as1mov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They will probably not attack people who want to fix these issues, but only those who leave drive-by one liner low effort comments about the UI.

They do attack people who want to fix the issues. See Glimpse as an example.

Perfect illustration of why it's really easy to see the parallels between the immaturity of not wanting to change the UI and the immaturity of not wanting to change the name. "Glimpse" was a fantastic idea and resistance to it is pure childishness.
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