On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:12 PM, vabijou2 <vabijou@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Christopher Howard-3 wrote: >> >> Its about having a product you aren't afraid to advertise. ..... As soon >> as I say "GIMP," you can see >> the doubt on their faces, because they associate the word with being >> weak or lame. > > I agree with this. Many people shy away from using products that aren't > mainstream, and have little to do with (or knowledge of) open source I have to agree that Photoshop *is* mainstream to the degree that image editing is -- as a verb at least.. people use PAINT.NET or whatever and say they 'photoshopped' it. I think Patrick is missing that 'mainstreamness' is relative (theres 'mainstream for the culture', 'mainstream for artists in that culture', 'mainstream for digital artists in that culture', 'mainstream for pixel artists in that culture'.. these levels of detail nest to produce the overall context in which something can be said to be mainstream or not. > software alternatives. There is nothing about the current name that > inspires confidence or denotes competence. Personally I don't recall ever encountering a program whose name inspired confidence or denoted competence to me, in this out-of-context way you are talking about. Except perhaps Lotus 1-2-3. For example, the following inspire confidence in me and I feel they are competent. Perhaps they have some common factor, I think it's more likely that it's just an understanding of how they work (and that that way is a good way to work) that inspires confidence and 'denotes' competence Python IPython PyTables NumPy SciPy Allegro Grafx2 Charm DosBox Lua Inkscape FontForge SQLite Lynx Midnight-Commander Thunar It looks like there is a 'Mildly witty' theme going there, along with a preference for literality and brevity. OTOH it could be simply that witty, literal-minded people tend to produce software I find competent. > > I think that the time to change the name would be when a release comes out > that has an option to run in a single window. This is a major change that > people have requested for some time and this new configuration is sure to be > discussed widely on the internet. That version could be called something > like "Gimp+". Over time this might become shortened in blogs, forums, etc. > to "G+", 'jeeples'? lol. I'm sure the FSF people would like it :) How do we verb it though? jeepling? BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA. (more seriously, G+ is extremely close to the name of the gnu C++ compiler, G++) At the 'G+' point, the major internal renaming would need to take place, and that would require far more developers and far more organization than the GIMP project currently has. Even simply switching from GIMP to GIMP+ (I'm -1 on 'Gimp+') would involve considerable effort (mainly in keeping I18N current). > and then a later major release could use that as the name. The > whole time, Wilber the mascot would remain basically the same to provide > continuity. I'm no ad wizard so I don't claim this is the best naming > strategy, but I think it provides an example of how the rebranding process > could go. _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
