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In a nutshell, as concise as I can muster it: Drew didn't like Rust very much, and criticized it a lot for it's complexity. He is also a very vocal supporter o

In a nutshell, as concise as I can muster it: Drew didn't like Rust very much, and criticized it a lot for it's complexity. He is also a very vocal supporter of open-source, going so far as to disable NVIDIA's non-free driver support in his wayland window manager/compositor Sway. On top of that, he made SourceHut, an alternative to GitHub/Gitlab and some other innovative projects, like Gemini. EDIT: Drew did not make Gemini, but he is still one of it's most vocal promoters. /EDIT Recently, he even disclosed a new systems language, much simpler than Rust and more flexible than Golang. Suffice to say, he's made some enemies that don't want him and his team to succeed.

lifthrasiir 4y ago
Your summary is very one-sided and even misleading. (Drew never invented Gemini for example.) It is fair to say that Drew did bring lots of great things to F/OSS but is also a controversial figure due to his writing and communication style.
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  Being controversial shouldn't make you a target of litteral hate speech.
  - lifthrasiir 4y ago
    He has a bad habit to not distinguish hate speech from criticism. This time it might be an actual hate speech, but we can't be never sure without further information. (And I'm very supportive of his works! But I can't condone his communication style because that diminishes the value of his works.)
TT-392 4y ago
I don't really get the disabling the NVIDIA non-free driver thing. Doesn't that driver just not support wayland in the first place?
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  It does support it, but it is doing it in a non-standard way.
  - kaladin-jasnah 4y ago
    It supports GBM now.
em-bee 4y ago
it doesn't suffice to me. there are many other people being critical that don't get this hate. none of this should make him enemies.
azornathogron 4y ago
> On top of that, he made SourceHut, an alternative to GitHub/Gitlab and some other innovative projects, like Gemini. Drew didn't make Gemini, at least not if "make" means started the project or came up with the idea. See also, the Gemini FAQ: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi I think he has been involved in the Gemini community at some level(?); I expect he's made a server and/or client, but lots of people have done that. Indeed, making the protocol simple enough for ~anyone to implement it is one of the goals of Gemini as far as I understand it.
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  Sorry, will fix it.
knowledge-clay 4y ago
> and some other innovative projects, like Gemini Drew has built some great gemini software, but he didn't make Gemini, it is a community project led by Solderpunk.
lin83 4y ago
> going so far as to disable NVIDIA's non-free driver support in his wayland window manager/compositor Sway. AFAIK this is backwards. It was NVIDIA developers that decided to invent their own thing (EGL Streams) instead of supporting Mesa GBM. This meant open source projects had to support a special backend for wayland specifically for NVIDIA harware. KDE also refused to support it until an NVIDIA dev stepped up to do the work for them. Sway works on Nouveau (the severely limited open source NVIDIA driver) with the wonderfully named flag "--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia".
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  Yeah, it was a badly formulated sentence, thanks for the correction. Also, that legendary flag was removed in a recent commit: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c0a1b5118dbe2536060 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c...
  - lin83 4y ago
    I'm glad Nvidia made the right call at the end of the day. I like to think that developers taking a stand against EGL Streams contributed to their move to open more of their Limux driver stack.
mustache_kimono 4y ago
> Suffice to say, he's made some enemies that don't want him and his team to succeed. This is the "Donald Trump is an American politician..." take. Drew is most well-known as a high-profile FOSS troll. You should view some other entries in his blog. My first experience with Drew was "Developers shouldn't distribute their own software." That post goes directly to the heart of the question, "Why would you call him a troll?" Because he has glib and self-serving answers for every seemingly hard question in software.
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  I read his blog posts regularly. I even read the one you mentioned. The guy has his opinions. It's his blog. You are free to express your opinions on your blog.
  - xoxoxoxox 4y ago
    Absolutely, just as others are free to form their own opinions on his tone and approach to communication and share those.
  - mustache_kimono 4y ago
    Sure. No argument there? It's fine if he expresses his opinions, and even if some people enjoy these opinions. Serious people just shouldn't take his opinions seriously. Why? Because I've yet to experience an instance where his views were at all illuminating or helpful. For each and every issue I've seen him confront, he seems to choose the most shallow, uncritical, provocative path. It's Fox News-style opinion journalism for FOSS.
- caslon 4y ago
  That was a completely sensible post, though. Shipping binaries that users can't reproduce is harmful to users, and wastes time on behalf of developers.
  - mustache_kimono 4y ago
    Ugh. I'm not sure you remember the article correctly. This is kind of the problem with his writing in general; it has a Rashomon quality. In this particular post, he expresses an admirable sentiment (devs shouldn't be responsible for packaging, users need to take more responsibility for their distro) and then fails to consider any of the practical problems with his approach (What if devs want users to use their software? Users and maintainers generally don't give a shit about your software). Yet with his usual DeVault-ian flourish, he concludes that he's solved all the intractable problems of software distribution. Spoiler alert: He hasn't.

lifthrasiir 4y ago

Your summary is very one-sided and even misleading. (Drew never invented Gemini for example.) It is fair to say that Drew did bring lots of great things to F/OSS but is also a controversial figure due to his writing and communication style.

wheelerof4te 4y ago
Being controversial shouldn't make you a target of litteral hate speech.
- lifthrasiir 4y ago
  He has a bad habit to not distinguish hate speech from criticism. This time it might be an actual hate speech, but we can't be never sure without further information. (And I'm very supportive of his works! But I can't condone his communication style because that diminishes the value of his works.)

TT-392 4y ago

I don't really get the disabling the NVIDIA non-free driver thing. Doesn't that driver just not support wayland in the first place?

wheelerof4te 4y ago
It does support it, but it is doing it in a non-standard way.
- kaladin-jasnah 4y ago
  It supports GBM now.

em-bee 4y ago

it doesn't suffice to me. there are many other people being critical that don't get this hate. none of this should make him enemies.

azornathogron 4y ago

> On top of that, he made SourceHut, an alternative to GitHub/Gitlab and some other innovative projects, like Gemini. Drew didn't make Gemini, at least not if "make" means started the project or came up with the idea. See also, the Gemini FAQ: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi I think he has been involved in the Gemini community at some level(?); I expect he's made a server and/or client, but lots of people have done that. Indeed, making the protocol simple enough for ~anyone to implement it is one of the goals of Gemini as far as I understand it.

wheelerof4te 4y ago
Sorry, will fix it.

knowledge-clay 4y ago

> and some other innovative projects, like Gemini Drew has built some great gemini software, but he didn't make Gemini, it is a community project led by Solderpunk.

lin83 4y ago

> going so far as to disable NVIDIA's non-free driver support in his wayland window manager/compositor Sway. AFAIK this is backwards. It was NVIDIA developers that decided to invent their own thing (EGL Streams) instead of supporting Mesa GBM. This meant open source projects had to support a special backend for wayland specifically for NVIDIA harware. KDE also refused to support it until an NVIDIA dev stepped up to do the work for them. Sway works on Nouveau (the severely limited open source NVIDIA driver) with the wonderfully named flag "--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia".

wheelerof4te 4y ago
Yeah, it was a badly formulated sentence, thanks for the correction. Also, that legendary flag was removed in a recent commit: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c0a1b5118dbe2536060 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c...
- lin83 4y ago
  I'm glad Nvidia made the right call at the end of the day. I like to think that developers taking a stand against EGL Streams contributed to their move to open more of their Limux driver stack.

mustache_kimono 4y ago

> Suffice to say, he's made some enemies that don't want him and his team to succeed. This is the "Donald Trump is an American politician..." take. Drew is most well-known as a high-profile FOSS troll. You should view some other entries in his blog. My first experience with Drew was "Developers shouldn't distribute their own software." That post goes directly to the heart of the question, "Why would you call him a troll?" Because he has glib and self-serving answers for every seemingly hard question in software.

wheelerof4te 4y ago
I read his blog posts regularly. I even read the one you mentioned. The guy has his opinions. It's his blog. You are free to express your opinions on your blog.
- xoxoxoxox 4y ago
  Absolutely, just as others are free to form their own opinions on his tone and approach to communication and share those.
- mustache_kimono 4y ago
  Sure. No argument there? It's fine if he expresses his opinions, and even if some people enjoy these opinions. Serious people just shouldn't take his opinions seriously. Why? Because I've yet to experience an instance where his views were at all illuminating or helpful. For each and every issue I've seen him confront, he seems to choose the most shallow, uncritical, provocative path. It's Fox News-style opinion journalism for FOSS.
caslon 4y ago
That was a completely sensible post, though. Shipping binaries that users can't reproduce is harmful to users, and wastes time on behalf of developers.
- mustache_kimono 4y ago
  Ugh. I'm not sure you remember the article correctly. This is kind of the problem with his writing in general; it has a Rashomon quality. In this particular post, he expresses an admirable sentiment (devs shouldn't be responsible for packaging, users need to take more responsibility for their distro) and then fails to consider any of the practical problems with his approach (What if devs want users to use their software? Users and maintainers generally don't give a shit about your software). Yet with his usual DeVault-ian flourish, he concludes that he's solved all the intractable problems of software distribution. Spoiler alert: He hasn't.