The sexual deviants at Freedesktop appear to be reaching out to other projects to intimidate them into being compliant with their code of conduct, where they technically have no authority, using the threat to ban them from their platforms as happened below. Long story short, there was a trans person making a big deal about pronouns in the Discord for Hyprland a year or two back, and they received some grief and a moderator changed their pronouns in their username to “who/cares”. Since then Vaxry added a code of conduct and made the forum nicer, so why now is an employee of Red Hat and member of the Freedesktop code of conduct team reaching out him in an intimidating manner? This is the problem with foundations, they take money and give board seats, and the direction of the project is co-opted and sprinkled with sexual deviants apparently. Here’s a link to Drew’s blog post mentioned below which made a lot of claims without many receipts. Seemed like the Hyprland community just had a rich sense of humor to me. This kind of backs what was thought of the Freedesktop, Redhat and IBM management of free software, as they try to extinguish X.Org and libel XLibre. As far as I’m concerned, you can put IBM and Red Hat’s projects in the trash where it belongs, including Fedora, Wayland, Flatpak…
https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-fdo-and-redhat
First Blog Post
I never would have thought I’d have to write this blogpost, yet here we are.
I want to preface this with how this post is not to start a hate campaign on RedHat, Freedesktop, or the people mentioned, but an attempt to bring unacceptable behavior to light and try and solve the problems that lie within.
I do not condone any hateful messages sent towards any of the parties mentioned.
Recently I have received an email filled with threats to my inbox, from a member of the X.org board, Freedesktop.org, and a Red Hat employee. Let’s call them “Alex”.
In it, they brings some hearsay and old incidents of not-so-nice behavior from both my side, as well as my moderators and community, on our discord server. Moreso, they claim that they will ban me from Freedesktop if that happens again. Quite puzzling, considering I don’t post that much on there, let alone anything punishable…
Read that again.
Someone from Freedesktop, is going to ban me on Freedesktop, for stuff I’ve done in my Discord server. Mind you, we’re not affiliated with Freedesktop in any way, shape or form.
Let’s analyze the e-mails.
Even if you hate me, I understand that, but I still invite you to read this post. It might be of interest.
General note
Please note I’ll be using excerpts and skipping over parts where appropriate, but I will link the entire exchange as a PDF at the bottom of this blogpost.
First e-mail
They introduce themselves as:
Hi, I’m (Name) from X.org/Freedesktop.org’s code of conduct team. The main
reason that I’m contacting you is because of some concerns we have regarding
hyprland’s community moderation.
Not an e-mail I was expecting, let’s see what is in store for us.
Before going further into this, I’d like to
point out that as far as I can tell – behavior on this server seems to have
improved recently. […]
Cool… then why contact me…?
[…] considering the publicity of a lot of these incidents has been
enough for people to bring this to our attention along with the fact that most
of these statements were not just made by community members, but you in
particular – we feel that it needs to be made explicitly clear that pretty
much all of the aforementioned behavior is very much against freedesktop’s
code of conduct – which does extend outside of our infrastructure to a
reasonable extent, as explained further down. This point is also not open for
discussion.
You can call this point as not open for discussion – but I don’t care about your feelings here.
The FDO CoC does not apply to Hyprland, a project entirely unrelated to Freedesktop. You are not an internet police force.
[…] Considering that you’re one of the lead developers for hyprland, combined with
the fact this is a publicly accessible discord that is directly associated
with and promoted by your project, your behavior not only influences people’s
impressions of your community – but it also reflects on communities like ours
when we interact with and accept contributions from hyprland.
BS. You don’t receive any contributions from Hyprland. The contributions you receive are a few commits made by me personally, (AFAIK I am not hyprland, I am a human being) and all the contributions in the form of comments or commits do not break the FDO CoC in any way, shape or form.
Later in the e-mail, they bring up a few points I’ve already explained, apologized for, or clarified, in past blogposts or other places. All of the comments they bring up are well over 1.5 years old.
They close the mail with:
So, please consider this a formal warning that the CoC team expects not to run
into future examples of this kind of behavior from hyprland. If this comes up
again in the future, we will have to consider further action.
Again, acting like internet police.
Conclusions from the first e-mail
Now, you might agree with Alex here, or you may not agree. That does not matter.
What matters is that you can see someone in a position of power (spanning across the X.org board, the Freedesktop CoC board, and a RedHat employee) abusing their power to enforce their own CoC outside of where they are allowed to – the size of their project does not equip them with the power to enforce their set of rules over unrelated projects.
You might say “oh but they are doing this in the name of good!”.
Unfortunately, this cuts both ways. The notion of “good” is subjective and open to interpretation.
Let me give an example.
Imagine you are a young woman with left-wing views in her 20s.
Now imagine FDO is a very zealous christian-ran organization, that in their CoC bans talking about left-wing politics.
In the eyes of the christians, they are doing the mission of the Lord and they are the good guys. Now, because they need to be doing Lord’s work, they send you an email that they will ban you from a few important dependencies your big and successful project depends on, because you talked positively about left-wing politicians on your own Discord server.
Now it sounds a bit worse, no?
I respect everyone’s right to freedom and to moderate their community however they want. What I don’t respect is people going outside of their communities and trying to enforce their own moderation rules onto others, especially when it’s based on outdated information and hearsay, like we’re seeing in this e-mail.
My reply
I replied, at length, clarifying that the e-mail does not seem like it comes in good faith, as it is just filled with threats based on outdated hearsay, also clarifying how the points brought up were plain wrong:
To me, Your entire e-mail reads off as a poorly reviewed letter that is written solely
to intimidate rather than to actually do anything constructive: You thank me for
improving moderation, however, then claim it is bad because of incidents that have occurred
2 years ago, all for which I have put out official statements where I explicitly claim it was
my fault, and such incidents have not happened again, on the same blog you cite further down.
Citing a small portion of a 3-page blog post, just because it suits Your case,
and ignoring the rest is highly manipulative and quite unprofessional.
Because it is.
Since You have already gone so far as to threaten me with “further action”,
let me reply to those threats. Hyprland, Hyprland Development and Hypr*
is not associated in any way, shape, or form with Freedesktop/X.org and nor are you with us.
[…] As per Your own values, or at least the ones You preach,
“diversity and inclusivity”, so people with different beliefs should not be marginalized.
I replied to all of the points brought up, you can read it in the original PDF.
The second e-mail
After almost 3 weeks, a reply arrived to my inbox.
I had hoped for some constructive discussion, but I was disappointed.
The entire reply was literally 6 sentences.
Beginning with
It appears there’s been a misunderstanding on your end. This email has nothing to do with Red Hat
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/
You can find my name there.
Oh, no, no. You’re writing this from an email @redhat.com, which is to be treated as a statement from RedHat. If you want to make a statement that I will not rightfully link to RedHat, use a different host.
It’s standard policy to not use company emails to address company-unrelated business.
In the end, Alex did not address anything, and just added that:
To answer your question: Yes, actually. The code of conduct team absolutely has
the right to remove you from Freedesktop.org and ban you from the gitlab instance.
reinforcing that they are absolutely going to ban me for ill-informed, old hearsay about what I did on my own Discord server.
Conclusions from the second e-mail
Clearly, the representative of X.org/FDO/RedHat is not interested in any form of discussion. They have made up their mind already and will not talk to someone they treat as lesser than them, obviously.
My reply to the second e-mail
Annoyed, I’ve decided to give up on any communication with FDO’s CoC team in my final reply to this thread:
[…] it seems obvious by now to us that Your intentions are not to seek
improvement or discuss any past matters, but to try and enforce Your (non-existent) authority over the Hyprland community.
I would like to remind You that no matter what You (as a team) may think or say, freedesktop.org’s Code of Conduct
will not be enforced under Hyprland Development, Hyprland or the hypr* umbrella.
[…] Should You wish to discuss the validity or the effectiveness of the active Code of Conduct,
in a matter that is appropriate to Your position as an outside party, we will be open
to any and all communication that respects Your position in this dialogue.
As such, we will be ceasing any and all further communication with freedesktop.org’s
Code of Conduct team until we believe that an attempt of communication is done so in good faith,
and with the intention of betterment, in lieu of threatening followed by ignoring the other party
completely. In other words, further emails from the freedesktop.org’s Code of Conduct team will
now be ignored unless You, as a team, decide to change Your attitude wrt. the issue at hand.
I will no longer reply to any and all e-mails regarding FDO/X.org/RedHat’s CoC, unless someone from those teams is willing to reach out in good faith, and not as if they are some “internet police” going to ban people for not sticking to their rules outside of places they apply to.
I am absolutely open to discussion, but I am not open to, what effectively is, harassment. Ignoring the other side, purely throwing around threats.
Conclusion
Closing this absolute fiasco, I want to sum up that this is unacceptable, especially for someone coming from such a position of power.
Not only does the FDO throw around pure threats based on hearsay, manipulated and outdated information that had been addressed ages ago, but also threats bans due to action in spaces completely unrelated to their own platform.
On the note of the author, Alex, if they believe actions outside FDO can still get one banned, regardless of being a joke or not (they did quote jokes from my side and took them seriously) then isn’t admitting to accepting bullying based on one’s viewpoints also banned?
Whether this is a joke or not, it doesn’t matter to Alex, apparently. So, this is against the FDO’s CoC.
This isn’t the only post on their mastodon account that would violate the CoC, but I don’t want to start a hate campaign here.
About right and wrong
There is no objective right or wrong and I touch more on that subject in my blogpost about inclusive activists, check it out here.
I’ve received a bunch of hate from people who are precisely the ones I call out in the blogpost, but other than that, the reception seemed positive.
Remember that we all strive to just make good software, and Hyprland is not a place where you will be denied contributions based solely on your race, gender, religion or any other traits. Unfortunately, some people still believe so, thanks to people like those from whom Alex likely got their intel:
I mean, a transgender person is literally surprised at this point that we accepted her MR. She expected us to deny it purely because she is trans…
Closer
I still remain hopeful this matter can be solved in a civil manner, with a proper discussion. It might not be that probable, but as we say in Polish, “nadzieja umiera ostatnia” (eng. “hope dies last”).
As of writing this blogpost, ~~I am not banned on Freedesktop.org.~~ I am now, see the update below.
Regardless of what some people might say about me, I focus on writing good code, and don’t go around and discriminate people based on who they are and what they believe.
I am releasing the full pdf, as the messages were far from confidential, being forwarded to the Freedesktop mailing list. (without even asking me if I am fine with that, fwiw.)
Thank you for reading to the end. I will now go listen to some Powerwolf.
Resources
Second Blog Post:
I will update the story here, as I have received an email from Alex about a day after I made my blogpost.
As with “part 1”, I want to preface this with how this post is not to start a hate campaign on RedHat, Freedesktop, or the people involved, but an attempt to bring unacceptable behavior to light and try and solve the problems that lie within.
I do not condone any hateful messages sent towards any of the parties mentioned.
On a side note, thanks for replying within a reasonable timeframe this time, Alex. Update to the story
Unfortunately, I was sorely mistaken about the ability of this being resolved in a civil manner, it seems.
Alex has sent me an email regarding this blogpost. I will again give you some excerpts, full pdf as usual down below.
Hi, I was actually on the fence of how to respond to this! Other members of the code of
conduct team wanted to make sure that you understood that we were being quite serious
and were open to discussion
by giving a 6-sentence reply you are not communicating that.
However, it was brought to our attention apparently you have decided to take to posting
about this to your blog.
I have full rights to do so, just like you apparently had the right to post it to your mailing list.
You even dug through my mastodon to find an old post I made?
“Old” is quite the statement – the post I reference is Feb 25th, 3 weeks before your original e-mail. What is old, is your intel, being 1.5 if not over 2 years old.
No “digging” was necessary – it’s a public account. Just like you “dug through” my blog and discord server.
Anyway, this is beyond unacceptable. I will be disabling your account on Freedesktop after
wrting this email. You will be removed from any other FDO spaces as well.
What is unacceptable is your power trip.
only one person in this situation has posted libel regarding the other in a
public space, specifically you on your blog, and if I am harassed as a result of that libel I
will be contacting you with a real lawyer.
Feel free. If posting your own methods of harassment to see by the public is libel, sure. Last time I checked, libel has to actually be unjustly unfavorable. I post your own words.
Final (probably) conclusion
As we can see, X.org/Freedesktop/RedHat utilizes people who are power-hungry, hypocritical and self-obsessed as moderators to say the least. Moderators that do not wish to look at themselves in a mirror, and treat any and all disagreement as a personal attack.
On one hand, they dig through others’ 2-year-old messages on a discord server, but on the other are shocked when someone posts a screenshot of their 3-weeks-old post on mastodon.
They do not accept any discussion, with Alex themselves suggesting that they were NOT willing to indulge in any, despite the content of this email:
Dear Alex, before calling this old, please look at the date posted.
Best part is, this post was made shortly before Alex’s 3-weeks-later reply.
Results
As of now, I have been banned from the Freedesktop Gitlab instance and related IRC channels.
For Hyprland Development, Hyprland and Hypr*, this doesn’t mean much. We are still allowed to use any and all software under the Freedesktop umbrella as per their FOSS licenses. What is a shame is that I cannot contribute any patches/issues to wlroots, which, well, at least in my opinion, were positive additions. But that’s just my opinion, it seems.
For freedesktop, this means that it’s no longer truly appropriate to call it free, as it absolutely is not. The banhammer is wielded by people who seemingly only wield it to silence people whom they disagree with.
Closer
It’s a shame to see such an important pillar of the modern Linux desktop, Freedesktop, in such a state.
I truly hope it can improve with time, regardless of whether I am a part of it or not. I really do hope so. Not because of me, but because of all the past and possibly future instances of similar behavior.
If anyone here is marring the reputation of Freedesktop, unfortunately, in my opinion, it’s you, Alex.
Thank you, dear reader, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this thread, regardless of whether you agree with me or not. I am now going to go listen to Beast In Black.