I agree with the sentiment of this post in general (annoyance with Wayland being shoved down my throat, despite missing core features of Xorg) but I am rather concerned about Xlibre's future as a project. The README being stuffed with reactionary political dogwhistles is downright weird and doesn't inspire confidence in longevity.
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Jun 17, 2025 - 19:53 UTC
That code of conduct is a huge red flag that this is going nowhere
I have been around long enough (enduring the big swinging dicks) to understand why they are required.
The statements of inclusion in the README when the principal author campaigns against it indicates a dire lack of social skills. What hope is there for this?
I mostly agree with the critisisms of Wayland, I too have had to uninstall it to get what I need, but this all seems worse
Having a controversial reputation in leader is not always a bad thing, look at Theo De Raadt or Linus Totvald.
It’s seem to have already attracted contributors, but let’s see how all of this goes in the next’s months.
There are different kinds of "controversial" and degrees of things. While you're correct that both Torvalds and de Raadt have a well-earned reputation for not always being the easiest person to get along with, most of their controversial behaviour centres around flaming people over technical matters, or sometimes organisational matters directly related to the project. Basically: it's not what they're saying, it's how they're saying it.
I've never seen either Torvalds or de Raadt go off on these mega-weird political rants completely unprompted, or inject that sort of thing in the project's README. Never mind going off on rants that smell an awful lot like Nazi apologetics. This is not just a matter of "how they're saying it", there are some real issues with what they're saying as well.
But you know, it's open source. He doesn't need mine or anyone else's permission. More power to him.
But it's really not the same as Torvalds or de Raadt. And it's also not so strange people want to steer clear of it.
It’s more a criticism of breaking certain things, which is inevitable when your try to refactor something. The matter is in the end if the behavior remain the same when you finish.
But it’s just a supposition at this stage, let’s see on the next’s month if it a complete mess or if it’s the XFree86 to Xorg transition
And then I recall that experiment in which an LLM trained to spew out garbage insecure code started to behave like a garbage insecure edgelord personality too.
i don't know about you, but i generally do not want to work with people whose political beliefs include that my country is illegitimate or that hitler's rise to power was caused by the polish and the british doing bad things to the germans.
This is exactly the problem with xorg right now and why the woke crowed wants to kill it. You people new to the community have no idea how actually diverse it is. Yes odds are you haven't been involved since the 90s. Let people think what they want or you should go use Microsoft Google or Apple products and be told how to think and feel. Like the poster said below its about the code not what people believe. Funny how RiserFS wasnt an issue but this day in age it would be.
I disagree with the sentiment and welcome the future. But I do agree the way the author skips over the reason this exists and the problematic nature of their readme is a red flag. Either they agree with the dogwhistles or are being intentionally obtuse to proclaim that it's "only about the code".
Definitely don't see this project having legs or at the very least not advancing very far.
> The README being stuffed with political dogwhistles is downright weird
For reasons I've never understood politics started invading open source about 10 years ago. What's weird is that these political ideas all seem to be highly aligned and this is the first major project that breaks that alignment.
Personally I'd prefer to see the politics, on both sides, disappear forever. It only pollutes the engineering and it fails to be convincing or meaningful in any other context.
> doesn't inspire confidence in longevity.
There are forces trying to kill X11 for their own internal reasons. I think as long as there is a project that is trying to maintain it, it will be successful, political warts and all.
I would guess that you started to be aware of politics about 10 years ago. You're off by at least 30 years or so...
For example, the removal of Jerry Pournelle's free account at MIT because he kept mentioning ARPANET in his column in Byte magazine. Then he accused MIT's sysadmins of being communists who wanted to destroy America's military...
That was 1985. The X project started the year before that.
I think politics will always be a big part of open source, as the nature of open source development is inherently at odds with corporatism and control.
It's particularly the reactionary stuff that concerns me when it comes to projects like this. When someone's motivation is tied to short-lived movements of social energy like that, I don't trust them to have a long term vision or investment in a project.
It's hard to imagine an energy that's apparently existed for 12 years and still going being described as "short-lived." Perhaps it's really just unfamiliar and that's why it seems so concerning?
I don’t recall anyone ranting about “DEI” 12 years ago. I do recall the same rants about 3 or 4 other terms that ultimately resolve to “people that aren’t me are allowed to do things”, though.
> I don’t recall anyone ranting about “DEI” 12 years ago.
Do you typically read the types of publications where that was likely to occur?
> I do recall the same rants about 3 or 4 other terms that ultimately resolve to “people that aren’t me are allowed to do things”, though.
Or perhaps you've just read second hand accounts of the phenomenon without actually confronting it directly? Which is what I presume given that you've come to such a self serving conclusion about it.
> the nature of open source development is inherently at odds with corporatism
No, you're thinking of “Free Software” — “Open Source” was explicitly pro-corporate from the moment the term was coined. OSI themselves will tell you that “open source” as we know it was a product of AOL's desire to get people to work for them for free: https://opensource.org/history
“The [February 3rd, 1998] conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label ‘free software.’”
Open source is inherently political. I think it's anti-capitalist and I remember how pro-capitalist people called it communist back in the 90s/00s. Saying open source isn't political is almost like saying Star Trek isn't political.
No it isn't. I have contributed to, and used, many open source projects without it ever being political. All I did was share work I created because it might help someone out, or use a tool I found useful.
Some people choose to make open source political and that's their right, but it isn't inherently political. That is a choice one makes.
