I continue to pronounce it how I prefer it, not as a slight, but most people here would be surprised by the soft g.
If I ever meet him I’ll attempt to pronounce it soft-g.
On the other hand, even though my name exists and is reasonably common in English, I’m fairly certain neither you or the GIF creator would address me the way I pronounce my name. I would understand anyway, and wouldn’t care one bit.
The debate itself is old. "Since the 90s" Wikipedia says, and keep in mind the format was is from 1987 - so I would say the debate is on from the get-go. Appropriate, too, if you think back, arguing about this kind of stuff was pretty common. Emacs vs vim, browser wars, different kinds of computers, tribalism everywhere.
Thinking about it, I think I understand why hard G makes sense for people. With GPU, we pronounce the the individual letters, as it's clearly an abbreviation - as no sane English word starts with "gp". With GIF though, even though it's an abbreviation, it looks a lot like a normal word, "gift", and English also has "give", another one with a hard G, so it feels familiar to say. Moreover, the US, where GIF comes from, has Jif already established as a peanut butter brand, so it makes sense to not pronounce a newly invented, differently written word the same as an already established thing. Well, at least to some it makes sense!
