Re: [Gimp-developer] Gimp in private schools and educational institutions



Renames have worked in the past as I see it and for the most part, as I'm
sure you've heard people consider before, a product named gimp can't
succeed against a product named professionally like PhotoShop.  So you
would only be loosing bad publicity anyway as the product is muted and
can't succeed.  No one knows what gimp is because it has zero market
penetration after years of existence.  Did you ever think that you having a
lot more exposure in schools for kids and having it taught in college
courses would lend to more people adding to the code and more money to
develop the product.  And NO this product could never be implemented in
schools period.  Don't kid yourselves, the name IS a blocker and name is
not an acceptable trademarks for public success.  The name is a joke and
definitely the reason why it's so far behind Photoshop in the professional
world.  Brand loyalty for this class of software doesn't start in the
professional world.  It starts in schools and college courses.  Photoshop
is as powerful as it is because they teach it in colleges.  Young people
come out of school with a working knowledge of how to make money with the
Photoshop product and they run with it for the rest of their lives.  It's
basically impossible to get someone to switch to linux especially gimp once
they have been trained for four years through college on a solid product
like photoshop with proper product direction and a focused core
competency.  How many businesses would have adopted Quick Books if it was
released with the title Sweaty Balls?  Same product, same publisher, but it
would have died on arrival.  And no one in the real world cares about
letter casing.  Gimp is GIMP and it literally is defined as "inferior" and
associated with sexual deviance.  Professionals pronounce acronyms as words
and it's pronounced gimp.  Your arguing with the dictionary if you believe
any differently.

As far as using the image software to fix the world's misconception of what
the word gimp means, in a competitive market of products, each team must
concentrate on it's core competency.  Changing the world's view of the word
gimp doesn't align with the goal of making quality image editing software.
They are totally separate concerns and I hope that's a joke that you would
be so concerned with the etymology of the word.  Why not name it Ass and
then tell people that your effort as a software engineer and you life work
were really just to get people to understand that an ass originally
refereed to donkeys?  I just doesn't make since.  Why not name your son Rim
Job and just tell him not to listen to other kids at school because it's
just a way of polishing the rims on your car.  He would not appreciate it
because that's not how the mind works.  No one cares about the outdated
origins of any word.  They care about connotation and not denotation.

How successful would firefox be if it was titled Faggot? That's a term for
a tree twig by the way.  Download the Faggot Web Browser here!!!  Battling
about the word faggot or the socio-political-cultural concerns of gay
people would kill the software effort to make a solid web browser.  That
battle over teh word faggot has nothing to do with browsing the web at all,
and that's an example of not sticking to the core competency of a product.
The people at firefox, rightfully, concentrate on making a solid product
that succeeds in the market.  Firefox successfully competes with both
chorme and safari and kicks the shit out of IE.  Solid work that the entire
open source community is in awe of.  They have their core competency
aligned with their product development, and you guys should too.  Compare
their funding to yours.  Compare their product and progress to that of the
gimp.  Firefox is a household name.  Ask people what firefox is on the
street for an experiment.  They all will know exactly what your talking
about and THAT's branding.  Walk down that same street and ask people if
they ever work with the gimp.  Women will slap you, most people would think
your being creepy, and you could be arrested for asking that to children.
I can't think of worse branding.  FireFox kills it and is a global
contender for the most popular and used softwares on the planet.  Gimp is
all but unheard of by the same people who have warmly become brand loyal to
other open source projects like firefox.  Please call Firefoxes Branding
department.  They would help you.  Seriously.

I can't believe that I'm hearing so much about how you guys feel the world
should change to accept your marketing and branding.  No product in
existence has ever succeeded with offensive, immature branding and
marketing, and then openly came out demanding that the entire world change
so that their product can have a chance to succeed.  Do you guys need a
product guy?  The direction is broken and the philosophy of your marketing
is the equivalent of potty humor.  I still don't believe you guys are
serious with your comments about how you on a die hard mission to alter the
worlds etymology of perverted words by making a imaging software.  Not the
best business plan.  I seriously would have never expected to hear
something so random, strange, or misguided from a group of obviously
intelligent people.

I know gimp is an amazing product or I wouldn't care so much.  But please
understand that you can't fight your target market or ask them to change.
It's not realistic.  Gimp is a dead project without a name change as it
literally can never be taken seriously.  And because every developer knows
that it can't be taken seriously, no sane industrial developer will
contribute time to it as it's a wasted life’s work.  That's why it makes
progress so slowly and falls further and further behind respectable image
software products like Photoshop.  A change of names will allow it to be
used in public school and colleges and be taught to per-professionals and
attract many new project contributes to the code.  Developers seek to
contribute code and be a part of projects that are blowing up with
success.

I could certainly find people in the professional world to talk about it if
a name change was in consideration.  What about GIM and pronounce it as
gem?  Why not just drop the P and it would be fine.  It would be explosive
and people could use it.  It would start to have young adopters and brand
loyalty.  Don't you want to have all your hard work go into a successful
product?


Best,
Sam

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:06 AM, Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com
wrote:

On 04/18/2015 11:55 PM, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:

On Wed, 2015-04-08 at 12:58 -0500, Sam Bagot wrote:

  A product called Gimp can't be used [in schools]



Although GIMP can be used in at least some schools, I agree with your
premise.

These conversations always seem to run the same course:

A: the name GIMP is offensive to me, or to people with whom I work. B:
No. The name GIMP isL not offensive.
A: yes it is.
B: It doesnt offend me, and your opinion doesn't matter to me. A: We
like the name. Bye.

For my own part I have some hesitation - for example, I am not about
to go to a meeting on making the Web accessible to people with special
needs while wearing a "GIMP" tee-shirt, and obviously can't promote
GIMP usage too openly at work.


You make a good point. I never thought about the "tee-shirt" angle. Now
that you mention it, I would happily wear a "Krita" tee-shirt anywhere it
might be appropriate to wear a tee-shirt. But I wouldn't wear a "GIMP"
tee-shirt anywhere (not even at home - what if the doorbell rang?) because
the connotations of the word "gimp" are too offensive to too many people.

 The "brand" argument doesn't really cut much ice - plenty of other
Free and proprietary applications have been renamed in the past, and
the publicity can increase visibility.


Another excellent point.


Maybe instead of GIMP 3.0 we could have a Goat Rainbow 1.0 or
something?

But then you get into endless discussions about the name.


How about a small committee to select 3-5 possible names for review? Liam
Quin could be the Chair and Sam Bagot could represent potential GIMP users
who are unwilling to deal with the unwanted connotations of the name "GIMP".


In the meantime, for school use, could you refer to the program as the
GNU Image Manipulation Program, and if people comment on GIMP explain
it's short for the longer name as that's too long to use everywhere?


Best,
Elle





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