Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdoliner | Hacker News Reader

Is the Cockroach Labs team actually made up of the creators of The GIMP? I checked the team page for GIMP and there don't seem to be any overlaps.

Maybe this is just a joke about both having off-putting names that's going over my head?

View on HN

The GIMP was originally created by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis who are respectively the CEO and VP of Engineering of Cockroach Labs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP

https://www.cockroachlabs.com/about/

It's true. These two guys have been working together in OSS for a long time - https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/22/20-years-of-gimp-releas...

Pete chose the name GIMP (we were mulling calling it "XIMP", for X11 Image Manipulation Program, but Pulp Fiction had recently been released, so...).

I (spencer) chose the name CockroachDB. I guess we have questionable tastes in OSS project naming.

Sorry if my previous comment came off as yet another job about Cockroach's name, I'm sure those get old. Thanks for your work on both projects. I've been a long time GIMP user, haven't had a use for Cockroach yet but someday.

Also, does this mean that Pete's on deck for naming the next OSS project you work on?

I think the algorithm is whoever comes up with the most egregious and sticky name wins.

Cool, thanks for that. I googled around and even got to that Wiki page but somehow didn't quite cross-reference the names.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com