Context: X11Libre is a fork of X11 aiming at preserving the X Server (fair enough, right?). One of the creators got permanently banned from freedesktop.org for apparently violating the Code of Conduct (no info on that, they just blame Red Hat), see themselves as hunted by both Big Tech and “toxic elements” who “took over the X11 project” They want to “make X great again”.

The issue about their highly political README (which they wrote due to the original project “becoming too political”, lol) also contains the usual red flags like transphobia. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/issues/40

  • observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca
    0·
    3 months ago

    Very typical projection (“I’m not political, you are”), but the reactions are unnecessary in my opinion (feeding the trolls as some would say). If you don’t like the attitude of the maintainer, fork it if you like, ignore it if you don’t.

  • B-TR3E@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    I miss the days when the OS community found -often painful- ways to deal with excentric or even toxic and erratic developers. That definitely had more class than conformist mobs celebrating each character assassination of somebody disagreeing. Not that I’d support any anti-vax bullshit or bigotry, I just dislike mobs of holier-than-thous. Because they aren’t holy or as “good” as they think they are. IMO they’re just the sort of people waiting for a reason to get their torches and pitchforks. I don’t think that’s any better, morally, or less intolerant than having unhinged opinions.

      • B-TR3E@feddit.org
        0·
        3 months ago

        You’re not calling out anyone here. That has happened elsewhere. You’re nothing but gossiping about it. You’re not the defenders of anything but spiteful, ugly people.

    • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      “No, go away.”

      That’s a perfectly valid way to deal with toxic contributors. There’s always people with better social skills and equal developer skills out there, you don’t have to accept and include toxic people just because they wrote some code.

      • Lyricism6055@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Just alienate them more and they will get better on their own… Right?

        I think the guy you’re responding to is saying that communication and not alienation is how we bring these people out of whatever holes they’ve dug themselves into.

        I know hes getting downvoted a ton, but if my take on what he wrote is correct then I also agree with him.

        The reason the world is so divided right now is because nobody wants to talk through things with open minds and with empathy.

          • Lyricism6055@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            I don’t doubt it… but there has to be some way to pull people back from the hole they’ve dug themselves into. Straight up ignoring them seems counterproductive, but you’re right… I’m not an expert and im sure people have tried

            It just feels sad and frustrating to me as well. This guy obviously seems to have some talent but got sucked into something that overshadows his talent with just plain idiocy on things he doesn’t know anything about it seems like…

            Really sad times

            Edit: just read the article you sent. This was particularly in the case of sending out messaging where people can’t have a discussion back with you.

            • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.org
              0·
              3 months ago

              The thing is, that there must be some corner from which you can start arguing. Rightwing ideology is in itself a relatively complete world image, where everything that does not fit into their world is a lie. If someone is willing to actually listen to you, discuss in a civilised manner and tries to understand what your point is, than you can have long and exhausting discussions slowly but steadily deconstructing the persons world view.

              However, if the discussions consists of “this is woke and a lie” and they are not willing to listen to you, than theres nothing you can do for them. Trist me, my parents are conspiracy theorists and I gave up in them. I Am willing to start arguing with them, if they are ever willing to come back into society, but for now their whole social group consists of conspiracy theorists and they are not willing to understand how science works, so any discussion is pointless.

        • thesmokingman@programming.dev
          0·
          3 months ago

          Your last sentence is somewhat naive. It can often place the onus on the wrong group. People don’t want to engage with the XLibre dude with open minds and empathy any more because back when they did, he didn’t engage with an open mind or empathy. You can only do that for so long before you have to isolate and protect. Quarantine, deplatforming, and isolation works when someone refuses to engage. At some point you have to be intolerant of intolerance if you want to get anything done.

          Scope some literature on deradicalization. There is only so much empathy you can give someone who thinks an entire group of people don’t deserve to be human and, more importantly, there has to be a cutoff when you’re not getting empathy back. You’re right, empathy and an attempt to understand is important. Don’t forget many people in marginalized or attacked groups have to defend their existence every single fucking day so sometimes their empathy is pretty drained.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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      3 months ago

      I’ve been watching a lot of Miniminuteman lately. Weigelt sounds exactly like the crackpot conspiracy theorists whose “facts” are being “silenced” by “the Establishment” of “mainstream science” because “they don’t want you to know this”.

  • planish@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 months ago

    X11 was never great.

    (Like seriously, it’s nothing but config files you have to edit from the local console shell and and proprietary stuff from nvidia that misbehaves, all the way down. Always has been.)

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      it’s nothing but config files you have to edit from the local console shell

      Some people seem to love that, as well as the total lack of any kind of access control or security. I mean, look at how many people are still arguing that “Systemd is destroying Linux”, clinging to initd with all its bash scripts and no nice way to prevent race conditions and such.

      To roughly quote someone from a talk (not sure where I heard that, was about systemd as well I think):

      “We nerds are very good at change when we’re the ones proposing it, but very bad when it comes from the outside.”

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      To be fair they made a lot of strides to the point where config file wrangling went from mandatory to almost never done.

      But yes, Nvidia would have quirks driving people back to wrangling config file, but they got better too.

      Though I’m not particularly interested in X11. The biggest thing they had was trivial application forwarding, but the architecture didn’t scale well to modern resolutions and UI design that was largely bitmaps being pushed, as well as not handling higher latency networks too well.

  • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Found more context, for who is now curious:

    • Apparently threatening violence with guns is okay (just got marked as “off-topic”).
    • The maintainer of X11Libre, Enrico Weigelt, is an anti-vaxer who already got scolded by Torvalds for writing bullshit on the kernel mailing list

    The more I read into X11Libre, the more I’m laughing. Now the freedesktop ban also makes perfect sense.

    • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      3 months ago

      Lmao, they even tried to say that they learned it from Dave Chapel (I think, it’s hard to understand) a few comments down like that makes it better. He literally used it in reference to jewish people, like come on.