# The Curious Case of XLibre Xserver

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Freedom of choice in Linux? The XLibre Xserver case suggests it's not as simple as it sounds, raising questions about openness and control.
There are already a few hundred comments piling up, which you can check out here and here. As you’ll see, many of them aren’t really about the technical details at all—instead, they express open hostility toward the developer, known for being a vocal critic of Red Hat. Some even go as far as saying things like, “If this gets approved, I’m leaving the project.” Wow.

*Please don’t get me wrong—this article isn’t meant to defend Enrico Weigelt, the person behind XLibre. I agree that many of his statements cross the line and veer away from technical discussion into politics and conspiracy theories, which just isn’t acceptable.

I really wish people would keep both politics and religion out of tech. It turns people off. We could have conservatives and liberals on a forum. We could have Christians, Muslims and Jews on a forum. We could have Ukrainians and Russians on a forum. We could have Israelis and Arabs on a forum. Delving in to these subjects can turn users off to Linux. There are plenty of political and religious forums for people to express their views. If you read the article you see the discussions are not about technical issues. Many of the comments get even worse.

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Keeping hate out of tech is a higher priority for me.

I simply don't think it's wise for a project maintainer to dismantle approaches to keep hate out based on the following reasoning (direct quote from maintainer of X11Libre):

We’re all adult people, we don’t need a kindergarten teacher who’s lecturing us on how to get along with each other.

That's reductive and bad faith.

If anyone wants to exit a distribution or project because they want to make a stand against hate, I support them.

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So, Stephan, if I understand correctly, that project maintainer is against all forms of 3rd-party moderation, and specifically against any perceived muzzling of his desire to "spew" any statements that "ooze hatred from its pores".

Did I get that right?

Sounds like a project that everyone should keep away from.

I may be going out on a limb here, but with that kind of attitude, there is no telling what kind of embedded logic is scanning for what he considers offensive, to trigger a GUI collapse!

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Sometimes, I think this happens because people can identify so closely with FOSS principles as a virtue or belief... and (un)necessarily take technical discussions as personal ones.

I personally think that the idea of forking X11 makes a lot of sense given its current status. But yes... I won't name them here for the purpose of avoiding such discourse, but other notable projects have suffered from this same rise of political assertion; to make free software about their ideologies and personal battles.

I do not agree with the "let's pretend it's not there" approach, but I do agree with a zero tolerance of hate or exclusion.

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This fork kind of reminds me of Glimpse Image Editor — remember that? GIMP was forked mostly because of the name, now it's just... gone?

I don't know if this X11 fork is just another short-lived fad. To my understanding, X11 upstream isn't completely dead. I just hope that if it's serious for the long haul, technically, it doesn't start causing division (say, driver breakages) so it worsens the experience overall.

"I use X11" ... "I can't reproduce. Which one did you use?" ... "XLibre"

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Ah my dear Jim. Keeping politics out of FOSS software, what a pipe dream, have you read RMS' or ESR's blog posts? Richard makes no apologies about being a communist and Eric makes no apologies about being right wing pro gun liberaterian. RMS is the founding father of the Free software movement & GNU and Eric is the founding father of OSS. With these kinds of founding fathers, FOSS is definitely not going to be a knitting club.

When I switched over to Linux and Ubuntu about 10 years ago, I was both shocked and amused by the flame wars and fanaticism over things which most people would consider inconsequential: C vs C++, Gnome vs KDE, Vim vs Nano, QT vs GTK, Systemd vs anything not systemd, X11 vs Wayland, Debs vs Snaps/Flatpaks, etc, you get the picture. Reading through some of the forum posts as a noob was like watching an episode of Jerry Springer, entertaining but thinking to yourself, why would anyone care that much about using one DE over another or why would anyone care that much if an app is based on QT or GTK? Obviously FOSS/Linux purists do. The corporate influence on FOSS has sanitised this a bit and replaced these flame wars with their own corporate approved talking points and flamewars, which could turn on a dime tomorrow.

The latest X11 vs Wayland vs Xlibre vs some other fork, is just the latest episode in the FOSS flame wars, with die hard fanatics on both sides getting in each others faces. Every time I miss Jerry Springer, I go on a flame war forum to get my Jerry Springer fix. The only reason I'm on this forum and use UM is that it's not an episode of Jerry Springer and it should stay that way.

The only reason that most FOSS devs hate on Xlibre is because they hate the politics of the main dev/maintainer, and vice versa, they love the app/project because of the politics of the devs/maintainers. That's the FOSS/Linux "community" in a nutshell and why I generally avoid that "community".

To the average user like myself, I don't care if the display server is X11 or Wayland or Xlibre or Perfect Display Server 1.0, as long as it works and does what it's supposed to do. Wayland doesn't have some of the functionality regarding remote desktop & accessibility, since I don't need these features, I'm not concerned that X11 is being replaced by Wayland. Those that do, should be working on a drop in replacement for X11, whether that's Xlibre or something else. And right on cue, when you post this type of comment on a normal "community" forum, the flame wars start, either defending Wayland as the perfect display server ever made or X11 as the best thing since sliced bread because it has that extra functionality. I can't take that level of fanaticism over a piece of software seriously, it's not even a football team, for God's sake!

When I migrated to Ubuntu 14.04 from Windows 8, I really liked the Unity desktop, it was functional and looked cool and didn't resemble any other DE on the market. I was really upset when Ubuntu moved to Gnome, as you lost most of the cool Unity features with Gnome. That's when I started my search, and found the Mate DE to replicate my Unity DE experience, and I've been a happy Mate user ever since! I use debs and snaps and flatpaks as neccesary to get my work done. I spend a lot of time repurposing old and refurbished hardware into new usuable systems, so I'm not fanatical about what's under the hood, as long as it works.

Getting back to your point about getting politics out of FOSS, that's impossible as FOSS and the GPL/Copyleft are very political by their very nature, just ask RMS. Free software and the GPL are political by design and that's what RMS wanted in the first place.

I'm not a dev, but from what I've seen so far in the FOSS community, is that the best devs have the wackiest views and opinions because all they do all day is code and sit on social media/reddit & vent, so don't really have a life outside of the dev bubble. I have a good friend that works for Microsoft as a low level assembler dev and he's no different. And he's a really good dev, really knows his stuff and even troubleshoots low level python & linux kernel issues for WSL.

The FOSS community just needs to accept this as a fact and just move on. Politics goes hand in hand with FOSS and the best devs are the ones with the wackiest or fanatical or out there views on various things. Linus isn't exempt from this either, and he created the Linux kernel and gave Nvidia the middle finger for not writing proper Linux drivers. These characters make the FOSS community the entertaining & lively, and why FOSS doesn't have the corporate beige box cubicle vibe. Software users in the FOSS community don't value these people enough in my humble opinion.

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100% - although based on my experience with devs it is not true that there is an association between whackiness and being the best at all.

Sometimes a form of stubborness is useful in order to perservere and deliver a code solution - but it can leak into some really disruptive behaviour that makes it harder for everyone else in the team to get work done - so at best its a double edge sword. That same stubborness (or other personality and behavioural traits) oftrn underpins whacky politics amongst devs - even though political conflicts cant be solved by the same stubborn approach that might help with code design - in fact quite the opposite.

I've known excellent developers who arent whacky at all. In some ways its almost a prerequisite because it means they know when its helpful to perservere like a madman and when it isnt. They just arent making noise on the internet.

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I'll add my own 2 cents.

Every design choice is the seed of a combinatorial explosion!

Knowing that such design choices can be for the better, is there any hope that those introducing those choices (namely the developers) could ensure the benefits are made, and shown, to be so obvious that the bifurcations that those choices sprout could not simply facilitate, but also obviate, the "possible" complete abandonment of the branch that does not incorporate the newly introduced code/operational "mutations" ???

I realize that is a very deep philosophical question, so I am not looking for any response/rebuttal, simply hoping to raise the awareness to the point of instilling reflection and possible "tweaking" of developer behaviour, in the hopes that the changes introduced embody a form which can attract far greater support and demand for adoption, thereby constraining the tendency for further fragmentation of the OSS domain.

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Interesting article Eugene, makes some similar points to my post. The Register now is just a corporate shill, that's why they gloss over RMS' politics but go into detail about ESR's politics. The bigger irony is that these same corporates prefer ESR's open source approach to software development and the permissive licences like Apache & MIT to Free Software & the GPL. These big corporations definitely aren't consistent and definitely just say anything to make a buck. XLibre is a "conservative" fork, so by their logic all of the GNU tools are now "communist"? Seriously, give me a break from their corporate doublespeak & "logic"! My dev friend at Microsoft deals with this corporate doublespeak daily and it drives him crazy! Thank God, I don't work for a large corporate anymore, and can happily run my small business without any "corporate policies" or corporate doublespeak. I count my blessings everyday!

Enrico has clearly rattled their corporate cage enough that they needed to counter him with the Wayback project. As ESR said, the the FOSS world is the bazaar and not the cathedral. The corporate world is the epitome of the cathedral and that's why there's backlash from the FOSS world when the cathedral is trying to interrupt the proper working of the bazaar. In my opinion, the more options the better, that's what makes the FOSS world awesome! That's why there are 50 different DEs and 100 different text/document editors, so you can choose what works best for your purposes. This competition guarantees that competing projects improve and become more useful over time, and if they don't, they disappear from the bazaar and become "unmaintained".

The whole "fragmentation" canard is just more corporate doublespeak for more competition, which they hate instinctively, all corporations naturally prefer a monopoly/oligopoly to maximise their profits. There are 40 different types of juice & cereal at the supermarket, that doesn't mean the juice & cereal market is "fragmented", it just means you have plenty of choices to choose from! The same principle applies to all the FOSS tools and apps.

All of this Xlibre/Wayback hoopla is just another typical corporate power grab, but it isn't going as easily in the FOSS world, as the code can be forked & isn't proprietary. That's why RMS was marginalised early on by the corporate world in favour of ESR, as his communist/copyleft principles went against their ability to maximise their profits. They didn't like ESR libertarian leanings either, but at least his open souce model allowed them to maximise their profits.

So a life lesson for all of you, don't trust the big corporates, IT or otherwise, as they will throw you under the bus even after years of loyal service.

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These types of devs aren't making any noise on the internet as they are actually doing what they are supposed to do - write good code and make useful apps. And like you said, they have the good sense to know when to continue a course of action and when to stop.

The stubborn types are definitely a double-edged sword, that's why they stick to their chosen course of action until the end, for good or for bad. Either they achieve something extraordinary or go down in flames. There's no third option. RMS & ESR are definitely in the former category. In Enrico's case, only time will tell.

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I wish I could give you 10 likes for this very important insightful comment :heart:
(I've never seen it so perfectly explained before. Spot on!)

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Great stuff; I'm only adding this as a "and also":

Sometimes I find that "fragmentation" is a genuine problem because it means there is diminished co-operation and compromise, and we get many poorer quality options (and little else). There are limited resources available for free software (and open source) development. Sometimes it is frustrating to see everyone off doing their own thing instead of coalescing/compromising a little bit so that - while there might be fewer options - the options are better.

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Yeah, everything in the FOSS world is a double edged sword, even in the case of software forks. More devs working on a single project means better quality but less options. It's like the robust vs efficient conundrum. In the FOSS world,this seems to naturally sort itself out, eventually devs that want to make their project better generally compromise to get more valuable contributors.

The more uncompromising & stubborn ones generally work as lone rangers and they generally either sink or swim, as they have no redundacy, in most cases they just sink as the pressure is too great for them to bear. That was the case with the dev that created a great little system backup app called Aptik. He was the lone dev and one day he just had enough of the bug reports and feature requests and just walked away from the project. Totally justified but a real shame. But that's clearly how the cookie crumbles in the dev world. That's why there are very few successful projects with mass adoption in the FOSS world with only one dev. Makes sense as they are essentially a one man band in a dev environment - which is a really tough gig.

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By the way, since we are talking about RedHatFedora®

Did you know that they have a rule or two in their code of conduct (COC) which enables them to kick out anyone who asks "inconvenient questions" ?

  • Initiating controversy for controversy’s sake (repeatedly asking disingenuous questions under a guise of sincerity)
  • Repeatedly instigating conflict, and baiting people into arguments

These rules itself are highly disingenious.
I completely understand where the Xlibre lead got his aversion of COCs from.

I also wonder how much of what is written about him is true and how much is just straightup slander instigated by his enemies.

( It is not as bad as the GNOME COC though, which is openly racist, sexist and oppressive. Enough to get them, at least in europe, in legal trouble )

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Yeah Tom, from what I've read, most codes of conduct in the FOSS world are disingenious and designed to exclude those that the "inner circle" dev group don't like while at the same time appearing "open". This cuts across the political spectrum.

Ubuntu is the only Linux distro that has a code of conduct that has some sort of common sense to it and that's why I use it. That's why I wouldn't touch a Red Hat or Fedora based distro with a barge pole!

The biggest problem in the FOSS "community" is that every distro/project likes their little bubble and don't like their comfort zone being encroached upon. This doesn't just apply to the so-called "far left" distros & projects, just look at the whole Rust in the Linux kernel saga. Some devs have that bureaucratic "silo mentality" well ingrained.

The other big issue in the FOSS "community" is that most people prefer hearsay & 2nd hand info from Youtubers/Social Media/Reddit posters to actually reading the original post/blog/tweet/whatever and making their actual conclusion from that. Part of it is laziness but part of it is that mentality of staying inside their bubble at all costs. Which is problematic for proper discourse.

Regarding Enrico, I have no idea what that guy believes in or doesn't believe, to be completely honest, I don't really care. But from his actions you can see he clearly rattled RH/IBM's cage, which is a good thing, and they needed to push back, which they did.

In my personal experience, most devs have wacky views about life, proper diet, believe in various conspiracy theories or UFOs or alien abductions or that there's an FBI agent spying on them on every corner & recording what they do because they maintain some vaguely useful app. Unless they are actually engaging in criminal activities, which some clearly do, this is all just garden variety cabin fever paranoia from spending way too much time in front of a screen, which is actually how you get good at coding. And I'm sure that Enrico is no exception to this "rule". And going from my experience on Linux forums, I can safely say without having all the facts, that stuff said about him is very likely exaggerated, mischaracterised or just plain made up to suit someone's narrative. Here's why:

I started my Linux journey and sticking Linux distros (UM, LM, Zorin) on old and refurbished hardware hobby, then business, by following a guy called Joe Collins/EzeeLinux on Youtube. His tutorials were very instructive as he used exclusively old or refurbished hardware and had various setups were for diverse applications, ie single drive setups, dual drive setups, laptops/netbook PCs, using an old PC as a NAS, etc. He decided to make a forum on his webpage to help newbies switch to Linux and to ask any questions if they got stuck. He had to close the forum after only a year due to all of the flame wars, toxic political posts, "don't use snaps or flatpaks, they're evil" and just general incivility from the people contributing solutions on the forum. In his words, he just got tired of moderating/cleaning up the garbage on the forum and it was easier to just shut down the forum. That's an indictment on the whole Linux "community". A guy tried to make a forum for newbies and it failed after a year as it was just too toxic.

On the flip side, that's why I actually contribute to the Mate forums as they're the exact opposite of that. It's also why I'm not a dev. My friend that works at Microsoft offered to get me an interview there for a entry level dev contracting gig. I was like, sorry dude, dev work is too toxic and I value my sanity :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: He didn't really have a counter argument except that the money was good!

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I totally agree. :slight_smile:

Same here :slight_smile:

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I actually disagree with nemo's last response, but that's ok - I don't expect to see eye-to-eye with everyone on everything.

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That's cool dude, it's ok to disagree with someone, that's a healthy approach to life and sorely needed in today's world :+1:

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Not the entirety of it :slight_smile: Just some bits here and there. I definitely appreciate your input and the experience you bring.

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