I agree GIMP is a bad name, but is it really a 'solid' competitor to Photoshop? My impression has been that it was never close to being competitive on features. I've only used either of them very briefly so I may be wildly wrong though.
IIRC, it was too expensive to make Gimp support non-RGB color spaces needed for professional image editing.
I use it semi-regularly and it does a great job for me, and most of UX is clear and obvious (high DPI support is lacking). But I haven't used Photoshop since the 90s (or Aldus PhotoStyler before it was acquired by Adobe ;)).
I think it could have been -- which is to say, I think a better name earlier on could have well been what could have gotten more contributors etc etc. Network effects and such.
