Glimpse, a new fork of Gimp created by dissatisfied users of the name "Gimp"

gimp-fork-glimpse

Without a doubt one of the great benefits of free software and that anyone has access to the source code of the applications with this philosophy is that anyone can modify and redistribute the application, clear as long as the part that the source code continues to be available to the public is respected.

With this, over time, applications have arisen that are forks or derived from others.Such is the case of Linux distributions, the clearest example we have is that of Ubuntu with Debian. Although leaving distributions aside and focusing more on the applications part, a few days ago while surfing the net I came across some interesting news and it is that a group of dissatisfied activists with negative associations derived From the word "Gimp" he founded a fork of the graphics editor Gimp, which will be developed under the name Glimpse.

The interesting thing about this is that it is observed that the fork was created after 13 years of this group of activists trying to convince the Gimp developers to change their name, who obviously simply refused to do so.

This case is due to the word gimp in some social groups of native English speakers it is perceived as an insult and also has a negative connotation associated with the BDSM subculture.

BDSM is a term created to encompass a group of freely consensual erotic practices and fantasies, which in some cases are considered a lifestyle. It is an acronym that combines the initial letters of the words Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadism and Masochism.

According to the founders of "Glimpse" (the fork of Gimp), a name change will make the project more in demand in educational institutions, public libraries and the corporate environment. For example, one of the users points out that he was forced to rename the GIMP shortcut on the desktop to avoid associations with his colleagues in BDSM.

Teachers trying to use GIMP in the educational process also note problems with inappropriate class response to the name GIMP.

The GIMP developers do not intend to change the name and they believe that during the 20 years of existence of the project, his name has become widely known and is associated in the computing environment with a graphical editor (when searching in Google, the links that are not related to the graphical editor are found for the first time only on page 7 of the search results)

In situations where the use of the name Gimp seems unacceptable, it is recommended to use the full name "GNU Image Manipulation Program" or to create sets with a different name.

Currently, three developers (bochecha, TrechNex, and Member1221), who had not previously participated in the development of GIMP, joined the development of the fork.

In the initial stage, the project is positioned as an «initial fork», following the main Gimp code base.

In September it is planned to publish the first version of 0.1, which will differ from GIMP 2.10.12 only by changing the name and rebrand. For Linux, it is planned to prepare assemblies in the Flatpak and AppImage formats.

Future issues are expected to include new features related to the removal of long-ago user comments, mainly related to the graphical interface.

These releases will be developed as a full fork, to which innovations from the core of the Gimp codebase will be transferred periodically.

The first fully branched version is expected to be Glimpse 1.0, which will be based on the GIMP 3.0 code base, which has been converted to use the GTK3 library.

When preparing the next version of Glimpse 2.0, the developers intend to completely redesign the interface and even discuss the possibility of choosing a different programming language to write a new graphical interface (the main applicants are D and Rust).


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  1.   José Miguel said

    Really? ... Tremendous outrage!
    I will never support a fork like that, Gimp's arguments seem more than reasonable to me.
    Greetings.

    1.    Diego German Gonzalez said

      And I thought that the problem with The GImp was an incomprehensible manual, an unintuitive interface, and the lack of tutorials

      1.    David naranjo said

        I agree, even that in the part of tutorials there are many on YouTube, although for advanced questions I do not know because I have not had the need to use Gimp thoroughly.

    2.    David naranjo said

      Well, the note is not surprising, because it reminds me of something similar that happened last year in a small conflict, where Richard stallman asked some developers to change the name of some packages that, if I remember correctly, were for Debian and he considered inappropriate the name of these packages.

      But in the end from my point of view it is a matter of language and culture.

      Regards. :)

  2.   Jesus said

    Mahara means idiot in the south of Spain, but nobody has thought of making a fork because it would be a crazy thing.

  3.   whimper said

    Fucking gringos, in Spanish that doesn't happen, no idea that gimp meant fornicating with the devil, fucking gringos