Just putting this here cause I found it a good overview of a pretty confusing situation I had no prior knowledge about
It always baffles me why some people can’t just fucking live and let live. If someone doesn’t appreciate your “joke”, then it should be a very clear indicator that you need to STFU, otherwise, it’s obvious you’re a dickhead.
Why does everything have to be a video these days ffs. What’s the tl;dr?
Cast:
- Vaxry: Hypr, Hyprland creator, contributes to wlroots and Freedesktop
- Lyude: member of X.org board, Freedesktop.org, Red Hat employee
- Drew DeVault: Sway and Hare creator, self-proclaimed Zig hater
- FDO: FreeDesktop Organisation(?)
Warning: Not lore accurate
TL:DR;
Vaxry’s Discord server for Hyprland was filled with edgy kids, calling each other LGBTQ+ related slurs - maybe they were from the community themselves, maybe it was a boy’s locker room. It was toxic.
From what Vaxry said, a trans user was misgendering his mod staff, so their pronoun was changed to “who/cares”. That was two years ago. Drew DeVault wrote a blog about it, Vaxry was pissed, shit happened. They discuss but could not come to an agreement; however there were a few changes. Vaxry apologized later about the incident, but he was not in agreement with political correctness.
Vaxry’s policy according to him is that he does not discriminate PR on the basis of people. He also created a CoC (mentioned earlier), but not many were happy about it being vague. But then, he also made a blog against inclusivity in FOSS, and calls them SJWs as a pejorative.
Vaxry lost his marbles when he got a mail from Lyude. Lyude used a Redhat mail, which was seen as unprofessional, and tried enforcing FDO’s CoC on Hyprland and other related project.
He sent back a passive-aggressive mail, which said “fuck off” in short. He also share Lyude’s toots in the blog about how Lyude supports bullying people for missing T in LGB, as a justification that Lyude tried bringing their past unnecessarily. Lyude sent another mail. Vaxry said that they don’t care, basically another formal “fuck off”. Finally, FDO yeeted Vaxry.
That’s it. Maybe I’ve missed a few details here and there. I did not read other’s blog, but Vaxrys’. And it isn’t looking good. In a way, this is also the abuse of power by Lyude, but looking at Vaxrys’ indifference, yeah, I wouldn’t have a positive attitude about that.
Source:
- How Freedesktop/RedHat harass other projects into submission
- Freedesktop/RedHat’s CoC team is worse than you thought
- Inclusive community activists are harming FOSS
Extras:
Edit: After watching Nico’s video, I’m convinced that Vaxry is a living, breathing turd. He crossed every limit. Good on him for getting banned.
Vaxry lost his marbles when he got a mail from Lyude. Lyude used a Redhat mail, which was seen as unprofessional, and tried enforcing FDO’s CoC on Hyprland and other related project.
Given that the context was Hyprland possibly becoming a formal part of FDO, expecting Hyprland’s developers to abide by the FDO CoC in that event was a completely reasonable expectation.
I’m looking forward to when the Linux community, and society at large, has forgotten about noninclusive Transphobic assholes like this fuck.
I honestly don’t care if the work you’ve done saves the planet and proves you’re the smartest human to ever live. If Vaxry can’t understand why being sympathetic to the LGBTQ+ community by adhering to their conventions around identifying pronouns is a good thing, then he’s simply chosen to align himself with those who don’t care, i.e. Transphobic hate groups.
That’s the company he keeps now, and it might as well be who he is.
I agree but what I find weird is the fact that they treat humans like this. I mean I get missgendering or refusing to call someone by their pronouns but dehumanising someone for who they are is fucked up.
Misgendering someone by mistake is just a misunderstanding. Misgendering someone on purpose is a form of hate speech or at best, willful ignorance. It is a not so subtle way of dehumanizing them in not recognizing them as who they are.
don’t care if the work you’ve done saves the planet
It’s not even that in this case. It’s a Wayland compositor not the cure for cancer. You have to be very socially tone-deaf to imagine people will overlook you being an asshole because of that. You have to be a billionaire for that to happen.
Alright who is in the Discord and can tell us if it’s actually 4chan or not
4Chan is obv worse, as was said in the video, but the discord can be pretty obnoxious. Just a lot of humor you’d expect from the average middle-schooler.
Yeah, whatever. If you don’t like the community, you leave it. Or make your own unofficial community with blackjack and hookers. As simple as that.
That’s a very low effort way of underplaying the effect of these communities on the broader FOSS communities. There is a good reason why most FOSS developers/maintainers prefer to keep their personal and unrelated politics away from their project communities. For one, unchecked bigotry in isolated communities can turn bad for the general public - for example, 4chan, kiwifarms, etc. I have heard from more than one source that community engages in hate speech and brigading against people outside the communtiy - one example is visible in this video itself. This is why laws specifying limitation to free speech exists.
Now, even if you neglect the brigading, there is still the problem of support and contribution. Hyprland is a widely used project. Many end users and developers are going to stumble into the discord server either seeking support or with intent to contribute. If they belong to any minority group, they might inadvertently expose themselves to bigotry, bullying and harassment. Now you may be compelled to label this as hyperbole and fearmongering. But this is well known, highly underplayed problem in FOSS communities with numerous examples. There are so many cases where women stopped FOSS contributions because they felt insulted and harassed. This problem is why CoCs exist in the first place.
Nobody can force others to follow CoCs. But as Brodie says, it has become very important for end users to evaluate the projects they use - to see if it is a community they want to ever interact with. Similarly, distros need to decide if they want to expose their users to such a community.
Great video from brodie, Regardless of where you stand on the issue, This video is an unbiased and decent take.
I honestly, but respectfully, disagree.
Brodie has been playing the apologist lately, and finding himself on the defensive when Nicco criticized Brodie for giving a floor to Lunduk, who is another example of a toxic individual within the Linux community. Brodie basically has played the card , “I’ll hear out anybody because it’s important to get both sides of the story.”
But imho it shows he lacks spine to take a real stand. I get why, he needs to retain his audience which is a mix of people from different political and social backgrounds. I just don’t respect it.
This latest video of his shows exactly his own reasoning. He says something along the lines of, if you take a position, you’re going to lose a lot of your audience. He was talking specifically about the FDO iirc, but he might as well have been talking about himself.
I do have some sympathy for Brodie, I’ve been following him from almost his first video when he was still in Uni showing off his BSPWM configs, etc. And I don’t think he ever thought his channel would become politicized nor do I think he ever wanted to address his own political leanings on his channel. But in my own life I’ve just noticed you can’t avoid that, even in a public platform. Everything is political, and if you don’t show people who you stand with, (like solidly, on one side or the other, you CANNOT have it both ways) then you just are saying you’ll sit on the sidelines while the people you’re supposedly advocating for (the Linux community) burn from within.
Until he’s willing to have Danielle Fore (Trans Developer on the Elementary OS Distro) on his Tech Over Tea Podcast, I’m going to say he’s giving a lot more attention and positive exposure to toxic people than not. And he’s not exactly actually on Both Sides, like he wants us all to believe.
The vast majority of both-sideism is done by reactionaries trying to hide their reactionary politics from their audience. There’s absolutely nothing about him that indicates he’s anything but a generic techbro with the politics of a generic techbro. Just skimming the comment section of his Youtube video just has the usual people whining about politics, which is rich considering that FLOSS has always been political no matter how much the OS part of FLOSS try to pretend that it isn’t so.
Exactly. His channel used to cover interesting command line tools, configuration instructions, explanations on technical topics, but my guess is that those subjects don’t please the YT algorithm enough, and he probably noticed the more he covered Drama that takes place within the Linux ecosystem, the more engagement he got with his content.
Which is fine, but firstly, he’s obviously pretending he hates the very drama he’s engaging in, which is disingenuous. And secondly, he’s playing the apologist for those spewing hate, constantly saying he “sees both sides of the argument”.
To which I’ll always point out, “I see you hearing out the perpetrators of the hate speech, Brodie, when are you going to hear out the victims of that hate? Where is the OTHER side?”
But yeah, he is just repeatedly revealing his lack of a spine, lack of integrity, and most pathetic of all, his lack of genuine empathy.
But imho it shows he lacks spine to take a real stand. I get why, he needs to retain his audience which is a mix of people from different political and social backgrounds. I just don’t respect it.
I really don’t think he should take a stand, This is why I actually like him a lot more then pretty much any other linux youtuber. With him I don’t need to worry about retarded distro takes, stupid drama takes. Just information.
Until he’s willing to have Danielle Fore (Trans Developer on the Elementary OS Distro) on his Tech Over Tea Podcast, I’m going to say he’s giving a lot more attention and positive exposure to toxic people than not. And he’s not exactly actually on Both Sides, like he wants us all to believe.
Im not sure who that is, Was there some kind of drama involved here? It never made it across my feed personally and being honest, due to my recent findings of new time, I’m partially suffering terminally online syndrome. Not to sound demeaning, but I genuinely have no idea who Danielle Fore is outside of the small tidbit you just brought up. Can you tell me more about them?
I really don’t think he should take a stand, This is why I actually like him a lot more then pretty much any other linux youtuber. With him I don’t need to worry about removed distro takes, stupid drama takes. Just information.
That’s fair. I just don’t see this as stupid drama. If someone is being a hateful bigot, and that is not an opinion it is simply a fact here, then that is the information Brodie should report, using rhetoric that reflects that. From my point of view, Brodie is either avoiding the certain left leaning politics because he’s actually right wing, or he’s too afraid to admit he’s left wing because he’ll lose a good chunk of his audience. Either way he’s lost my respect.
Im not sure who that is, Was there some kind of drama involved here? It never made it across my feed personally and being honest, due to my recent findings of new time, I’m partially suffering terminally online syndrome. Not to sound demeaning, but I genuinely have no idea who Danielle Fore is outside of the small tidbit you just brought up. Can you tell me more about them?
Danielle Fore is a lead UX/UI developer on the Elementary OS Distro who has documented her transition on Mastodon. She fields both technical and sociopolitical questions on her Mastodon account. She recently received some attention due to SwitchedToLinux spouting anti Trans rhetoric on his channel specifically referencing her, with both Trafotin and Nicco responding very negatively against SwitchedToLinux for that.
Her technical chops are up there with the best of them, especially when you consider ElementaryOS being known for their clean UX/UI design. If Brodie wants to truly take the mantle of an unbiased information only Linux influencer, then he should be covering the facts across the board, including her or at least someone who can speak from experience on the more than occasional occurrences of misogyny and transphobia that crops up in the Linux community.
Unlike Trafotin and Nicco, Brodie has chosen to handwave away this serious problem as drama while continuing to give a platform to those that are the toxic perpetrators of said rhetoric. All I ask is where is he platforming those who offer up counterarguments? People who are going to call it out for the toxicity it is? No? Nobody… Guess that speaks to the company he’s willing to keep and the company he’s not willing to. And honestly that doesn’t appear to be unbiased and willing to hear both sides. And it’s not even just presenting the facts. It’s hand picking them.
It is so stupid… Why make drama instead of making linux better as a whole. A sad thing to see in general.
American culture warriors have decided that their ideology is more important - you see this a lot where their ideology’s goal becomes the “greater cause” worth sacrificing the mission: e.g. in journalism.
Totally agree. Started with the Me-Too movement where we saw people accused and convicted without due process. It seemed to spin out of the Jian Gnomeshi acquittal.
Code of Conduct enforcement team
Yeah. This sounds like a truly free and open thing.
Also called moderators elsewhere. Without those, the internet would be unusable for anyone not a cishet white Christian fundamentalist.
That is just nonsense. Without moderators the internet would be unusable for everyone.
You’re trying to argue reality is the same for everyone. But as a CisHet Guy It’s kind of obvious I get treated better than women and it just gets worse from Woman to then any of the LBTQIA+ community.
I am not even white and christian and I can tell the difference. Please don’t try to argue about it being equally bad for everyone if moderation was taken away.
No, I am trying to argue that moderators are relevant long before any of that (discrimination based on race, religion, gender,…) even starts to matter.
Depends on your perspective I guess. The way I see it: Moderators are (partially) there to limit the spread of hate so if you are a hate spreader, you would thrive without moderation, but if you are a hate receiver, you’re better off when moderation rules are enforced.
Without moderators most spaces would be completely unusable due to spammers, trolls and others whose behavior and motivations have very little to do with their sexuality, politics, their skin tone or their religion.
Moderation of illegal/forbidden content is not equal to enforcing arbitrary soft-skill based rules.
You think being a bigot is a skill issue do you? Like everyone deep down is just a bigot (self-inferred I assume?), and some people just have the social skills to hide that better? Have you tried not being a bigot instead of just hiding it?
Absurd take lol. Every organization needs a code of conduct and someone to enforce it.
Enforce it against unrelated projects not being part of said organization?
They didn’t enforce it on an unrelated project, they enforced it on Vaxry, an FDO contributor.
If you walk into a job interview and they find your tweets of you saying the nword over and over, and you don’t get the job, that’s a you problem. Nobody wants to work with people who’ll bring negative PR.
This is true. But iuf they enforce a rule that I have to wear a frog hat with googly eyes at home they can kindly fuck off, though.
That’s not what’s happening here. They are barring him from participating in their project, he can still say whatever the fuck he wants on his own project. They just don’t want to work with him.
Oh, okay. Yeah. If it’s their project they can do whatever they want.
I just remembered the issue as they want to enforce their policies on the Hyprland community.
That’s the way Vaxry spun it to try making them look bad while he downplays his own behavior and malpractice. Basically he just lied and spread misinformation, he really needs to get his act together if he ever wants to work with them again.
I actually like this kind of light-hearted spirit. I dream of a future when this whole woke culture thing will be a thing of the past.
