In the world of open source community, forking means you can freely experiment a project with whatever changes you want, without affecting the original resources. Mentioned by TheNextWeb, The Register, and other top design and news sites, Glimpse Photo Editor is a recent noteworthy fork of GIMP, one of the world's biggest open source image editing software.
Why create Glimpse Photo Editor, a fork of GIMP?
GIMP is a longstanding project, first announced in November 1995. The name is short for the "GNU Image Manipulation Program." But to others, the most modern and often used version of the word "GIMP" is an ableist insult. As the GIMP team refused to make any changes on their Official FAQs , Bobby Moss, a technical writer at Oracle, then created this new fork of GIMP editor to address this problem.
The proposal was supported by another developer, Leonora Tindall, who noted that "I have, on two occasions now, recommended this program to photography and graphic design educators (as an alternative to Photoshop) who told me that they considered it and found it good as software but weren't permitted by their institution to use it in the classroom because of the name."
Glimpse Plans To Rebrand GIMP with Front-end UI Rewrite
GIMP has been around for over twenty years, so any kind of changes is a big task. Scheduled to release in September 2021, Glimpse Photo Editor 0.1 will bring only minor changes as they just migrate to a new identity.
With Glimpse Photo Editor 1.0, the team has plans to forge their own identity. They plan to work on a "front-end UI rewrite". They are currently discussing which language they should use for the rewrite. Art, mockups, GIMP Redesign concept ideas, and other kind of contributions are all welcome here.
The Bottom Line
To old users and fans, rebranded Glimpse Photo Editor seems like a lot of work to go through instead of merely changing the name. It also seems like the idea of rewriting the UI was tacked to make the project look more worthwhile. Let's wait and watch.