mikolajw> I am not aware of any evidence that there was an intent to offend. The only source for etymology I know here is an old interview with one of the original developers where he said that he blended the words GNU and Image Manipulation Program, and soon afterwards realized that he heard that word before in a film.

That's wrong on every count. The primary source is Peter Mattis' own words in the GIMP Gazette interview, January 1, 1997, by Zachary Beane:

https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/

Mattis> "It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for."

So the sequence was: IMP (rejected) -> XIMP (rejected) -> Pulp Fiction inspires "GIMP" -> they reverse-engineered "General" as the G. The Pulp Fiction reference was the generative act, not an afterthought.

The GNU backronym came later. Same interview:

Mattis> "the GIMP originally stood for General Image Manipulation Program, but has since been dubbed GNU software by Richard Stallman (with our agreement). Spencer and I decided that GNU Image Manipulation Program is a better usage of the 'G'."

He didn't "blend GNU and Image Manipulation Program." He didn't "realize afterwards he'd heard the word in a film." He was a college kid at UC Berkeley in 1995, Pulp Fiction was everywhere, they needed a name, and the word popped into his head. He says so plainly.

Note Mattis' original Usenet announcement uses the phrase "The GIMP" -- with the definite article, exactly like the movie character is called "The Gimp." That's not how you title software. You don't say "The Photoshop" or "The EMACS." You say "The Gimp" because there's a character called The Gimp, and everybody in 1995 knew exactly which one.

Peter Mattis' original Usenet announcement, comp.os.linux.development.apps, November 21, 1995:

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.development.apps/c...

Nobody needs to speculate about intent when Mattis spelled it out himself more than 30 years ago.

GIMP project history, written ~1998 by Seth Burgess:

https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html

The number one association most of the population of Earth have with the word "GIMP" is:

Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8kPqAV_74M