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XLibre Xserver: Banned by Red Hat Developer Plans Revival of X11

39 points by em-bee 1y ago

em-bee 1y ago
i am all for sunsetting X11, move it to the attic, abandon it, whatever. but banning someone who cares about it and removing their proposed contributions, feels hostile. letting interested people take over an old project that you no longer care about is part of what FOSS is all about.
- the_hoser 1y ago
  The continuation of X11 is likely not why he was banned.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    bad behavior on the guys part, if that is what you are thinking, should also not warrant the removal of all PRs, tickets and what not, unless that was all over his messages in them.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - Rochus 1y ago
    > The continuation of X11 is likely not why he was banned. Well, according to the article, Weigelt claims he was censored and that the ban was an attempt by Red Hat to eliminate competition and push for the adoption of Wayland; this action resulted in the deletion of his account, repositories, tickets, and over 140 merge requests associated with the Xorg project.
    - wmf 1y ago
      Textbook conspiracy theory. Now let's hear the other side.
      - Rochus 1y ago
        The article presents both sides and rather states a pessimistic view on the Xlibre project's chances of success.
    - 84ydk 1y ago
      Well, i can claim i am the king of England and it wont make it any more true then he saying he was censored.. He sent a ton of merge requests with crap code without doing any basic testing that broke a bunch of stuff without doing any meaningful work, there was no new features, no bugs fixed, no nothing, he was only changing code style and rearranging stuff without really any basic understanding on why things are the way they are.. the people that need to review his garbage untested MR warned him multiple times and eventually got fed up.. This guy is all bark and no bite.. i doubt anything will come out of this and it is very unlikely that any serious distro will ever package his shit X11 if it ever work.. this guy have a more technical review of his code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44202935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44202935
      - Rochus 1y ago
        I don't know how much research the author/publisher of the article did. They claim on their site that "Linuxiac is an independent media platform that publishes the latest news from the Linux world and open-source software. Founded by Bobby Borisov and launched in May 2020, it has quickly become a trusted resource for thousands of users daily, providing insights into all things Linux & open source."
        84ydk 1y ago
        dont know where he said that and not sure why this is relevant.. i have seen his PRs myself and fully agreee with the author/publisher..
        Rochus 1y ago
        I didn't have that much press when I forked Qt and started LeanQt ;-)
- Rochus 1y ago
  > i am all for sunsetting X11, move it to the attic, abandon it, whatever. Despite its flaws, X11 has key strengths and its abandonment is not without controversy. The same developers maintaining Xorg also created Wayland, so there might be a conflict of interest.
- Mordagh 1y ago
  > but banning someone who cares about it and removing > their proposed contributions, feels hostile. I was curious about this so I did a little digging. It looks like the other developers were not happy with the quality of his contributions. Reading the discussions in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1760 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1760 and https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 sheds a lot of light on the problems. Quoting two comments from the dozens there: > @metux i appreciate you maintaining and trying to improve Xorg but > this is the second time you break it recently, you really should > implement more testing... and > Honestly, I would strongly recommend just not merging anything @metux > does from now on. I do not feel that their presence here has been a net > positive -- I have seen zero actual bugs solved by any of their code > changes. What I have seen is build breakage, ABI breakage, and ecosystem > churn from moving code around and deleting code. > Xorg could use some actual maintenance, but that means fixing actual > bugs and solving real problems. In my search I also found that the XLibre project description mentions "BigTech moles killing Xorg", XLibre being "free of DEI discrimination" and wanting to "Make X great again!" (https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver). And he posted an antivax conspiracy on the Linux kernel mailing list (https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/903 https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/903). And he appears to be a German WW2 apologist (https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20181010.191925.ee1331b6.en.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyn...). So... there's that too.
  - airhangerf15 1y ago
    Well, at least he has views I can get behind. I just wish he was a better coder. /shrug
  - g-b-r 1y ago
    I ran into him (@nekradq) at https://t.me/linuxgramgroup https://t.me/linuxgramgroup, he writes there all the time. He's even worse than what others already said.
em-bee 1y ago
related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44200997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44200997
em-bee 1y ago
another article on the topic, adding more details: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/
hackerswashere 1y ago
Just know is some one banned without any proof

39 points by em-bee 1y ago

i am all for sunsetting X11, move it to the attic, abandon it, whatever. but banning someone who cares about it and removing their proposed contributions, feels hostile. letting interested people take over an old project that you no longer care about is part of what FOSS is all about.

the_hoser 1y ago
The continuation of X11 is likely not why he was banned.
- em-bee 1y ago
  bad behavior on the guys part, if that is what you are thinking, should also not warrant the removal of all PRs, tickets and what not, unless that was all over his messages in them.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- Rochus 1y ago
  > The continuation of X11 is likely not why he was banned. Well, according to the article, Weigelt claims he was censored and that the ban was an attempt by Red Hat to eliminate competition and push for the adoption of Wayland; this action resulted in the deletion of his account, repositories, tickets, and over 140 merge requests associated with the Xorg project.
  - wmf 1y ago
    Textbook conspiracy theory. Now let's hear the other side.
    - Rochus 1y ago
      The article presents both sides and rather states a pessimistic view on the Xlibre project's chances of success.
  - 84ydk 1y ago
    Well, i can claim i am the king of England and it wont make it any more true then he saying he was censored.. He sent a ton of merge requests with crap code without doing any basic testing that broke a bunch of stuff without doing any meaningful work, there was no new features, no bugs fixed, no nothing, he was only changing code style and rearranging stuff without really any basic understanding on why things are the way they are.. the people that need to review his garbage untested MR warned him multiple times and eventually got fed up.. This guy is all bark and no bite.. i doubt anything will come out of this and it is very unlikely that any serious distro will ever package his shit X11 if it ever work.. this guy have a more technical review of his code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44202935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44202935
    - Rochus 1y ago
      I don't know how much research the author/publisher of the article did. They claim on their site that "Linuxiac is an independent media platform that publishes the latest news from the Linux world and open-source software. Founded by Bobby Borisov and launched in May 2020, it has quickly become a trusted resource for thousands of users daily, providing insights into all things Linux & open source."
      - 84ydk 1y ago
        dont know where he said that and not sure why this is relevant.. i have seen his PRs myself and fully agreee with the author/publisher..
        Rochus 1y ago
        I didn't have that much press when I forked Qt and started LeanQt ;-)
Rochus 1y ago
> i am all for sunsetting X11, move it to the attic, abandon it, whatever. Despite its flaws, X11 has key strengths and its abandonment is not without controversy. The same developers maintaining Xorg also created Wayland, so there might be a conflict of interest.
Mordagh 1y ago
> but banning someone who cares about it and removing > their proposed contributions, feels hostile. I was curious about this so I did a little digging. It looks like the other developers were not happy with the quality of his contributions. Reading the discussions in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1760 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1760 and https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 sheds a lot of light on the problems. Quoting two comments from the dozens there: > @metux i appreciate you maintaining and trying to improve Xorg but > this is the second time you break it recently, you really should > implement more testing... and > Honestly, I would strongly recommend just not merging anything @metux > does from now on. I do not feel that their presence here has been a net > positive -- I have seen zero actual bugs solved by any of their code > changes. What I have seen is build breakage, ABI breakage, and ecosystem > churn from moving code around and deleting code. > Xorg could use some actual maintenance, but that means fixing actual > bugs and solving real problems. In my search I also found that the XLibre project description mentions "BigTech moles killing Xorg", XLibre being "free of DEI discrimination" and wanting to "Make X great again!" (https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver). And he posted an antivax conspiracy on the Linux kernel mailing list (https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/903 https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/903). And he appears to be a German WW2 apologist (https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20181010.191925.ee1331b6.en.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyn...). So... there's that too.
- airhangerf15 1y ago
  Well, at least he has views I can get behind. I just wish he was a better coder. /shrug
- g-b-r 1y ago
  I ran into him (@nekradq) at https://t.me/linuxgramgroup https://t.me/linuxgramgroup, he writes there all the time. He's even worse than what others already said.

em-bee 1y ago

related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44200997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44200997

em-bee 1y ago

another article on the topic, adding more details: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/

hackerswashere 1y ago

Just know is some one banned without any proof