> We believe that the history of the Lena image clashes with the extensive efforts to promote women undertaking higher education in science and engineering
This sounds pretty easy to understand to me, and like the main reason for the decision.
I'm with you. To me IrfanView always felt incredibly archaic and chaotic, and I never wanted to wade through its 5 billion settings to "fix" it for me. But I guess some people just care more about UX while others just want as many features as possible, and I'm glad it's there for the latter camp.
Because now everyone with half a brain can create hundreds of these images in minutes, whereas previously it took substantial time investment and skill.
It's sad that people seem to be consistently incapable of understanding this nuance; same with the "but humans also learn by studying existing work!" argument that always come up when discussing the ethics of training and datasets.