On Sun, 12 Dec 2004, David [iso-8859-15] Gómez wrote: > Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:19:26 +0100 > From: "David [iso-8859-15] Gómez" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > To: Alan Horkan <horkana@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > Cc: gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, gimp-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] Why not allow the name to be configurable? > [was [Bug 160890] Change Gimp name (fwd)] > > Hi Alan, > > > I don't think it is a good idea to change the project name. > > So you kind of answered to yourself... No that is the answer to quite a different question. I asked why not accept patches that make it easier to change the name. > > It is a good sign that the gimp has improved so much that people are only > > left with the name to complain about :) > > I don't complain about the name. I never claimed you did. > > I think it would be a fair compromise to accept patches that make it > > easier for those who would like to configure the name. > > That a non-sense claim. I think that people that get offended by > a name have deeper problems. You can say it is trivial or silly but you cannot deny that it happens to bother a small minority of people. I do not know if you are a native English speaker but the term gimp is has a very similar meaning to "cripple". If you look at the bug report I point to some comments where people other than me say they have encountered difficulties, notably the embarassment of explaining the name really was the gimp to a person in a wheelchair and that the user was not mocking them. > And they should worry first about them instead of changing everybody's > minds to their way of thinking. I say again that I was not asking to change what everbody else calls the GNU Image Manipulation Program but I was asking why it would not be acceptable to make it easier for other to change the name (and Sven has explained the reasons for it). > I answer to you, because i work on a window manager with a name > that could be considered offensive by spanish-speakers with similar What is the name? > ideas to the users who claim that gimp should change its name. But we > didn't intend to offense anyone when we choosed the name, it was just a > joke. I'm not a big fan of "funny" project names because different people find completely different things funny, and I much prefer names that give some idea of what a project does (which the long form GNU Image Manipulation Program does serve that purpose). But this is all beside the point, I'm not trying to force the majority to change their ways but I wanted to make it easier for the small minority to help themselves. > People who complained about the name understood this when we explained > it to them. > > If a project as big as Mozilla Firefox allows it name to be changed, why > > would it be an issue for the gimp? > > There was another project called Firebird, so there was a good reason > to change it. As Sven explained and I pointed out in other posts the fact that Mozilla and Firefox can be so easily rebranded has far more to do with Netscape than it does any legal issues. > > Why require people to fork or maintain their own patchsets for the sake of > > a little extra configurability. > > I wouldn't call it configurability. What would you call it then? - Alan
