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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