3 ms·

Xlibre fork lights a fire under long-dormant X.org development

25 points by em-bee 1y ago

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
Was hoping this would go by unnoticed. This dude is a hopeless weirdo, who mindlessly refactors for no real reason, and breaks stuff. The insane conspiracy minded anti-big tech aspect is deeply disturbing. Replying to some of the most respectable food hard working nice people on the planet who have carried huge X subsystems forward for decades with love and care with just frothing madness. There aren't words for the scorn this insanity & batshit deserve. This comment and first reply have some solid other discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303328 I frelling love the reg, love me a good rag. It was intensely intensely disappointing to see they carrying so much water for this deeply problematic antisocial troublemaker.
- em-bee 1y ago
  granted. the interesting question now is, why and how this will affect Xorg. at this point any hope for this to go unnoticed is lost, and how Xorg devs are responding will have a significant influence on how this will all play out.
- throwaway7356 1y ago
  There is a significant community for which these are not insane conspiracy theories, but real concerns. Just take anyone watching Lunduke or from anti-systemd/anti-Red-Hat/anti-woke distributions like OpenMandriva or Devuan and you will find many people welcoming this fork specifically because of that.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    i find the discussions of weigelts political opinions not really interesting. they will probably lead to his eventual downfall, but these discussions hide the real problem: that a significant group of people are unhappy with X11 support going away. Xlibre may just be successful despite weigelts opinions (and maybe even attract some supporters because of them) and the only way for Xorg/wayland to counter the rise of Xlibre is to address the concerns and not to write off Xlibre because of weigelt.
    - throwaway7356 1y ago
      No, people flock to Xlibre because of Weigelt's political opinions. They are unhappy because Wayland is developed by "woke" people, thus the need to continue to use X11.
      - OCASMv2 1y ago
        How do know? Did you ask everyone involved for their motivations?
      - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
        My feel is that this is 100% dead on, that the agitators have found their mark to radicalize, anger, and make proper pests of folks who want to be tilting and mad. Politics lead here; anything for their anti-causes.
        em-bee 1y ago
        well here is the proof to the contrary: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/X11Libre#Disclaimer https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/X11Libre#Disclaimer Summary Replace the X.Org X11 Xserver (xorg-x11-xserver) with the X11Libre (XLibre) Xserver, an actively maintained fork. Disclaimer The Change Owner does NOT share or endorse upstream's political views! Given that those can be found even in the upstream project-wide README.md, the Change Owner feels obliged to make this clarification.
        throwaway7356 1y ago
        https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f43-change-proposal-x11libre-system-wide/156330/36 https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f43-change-proposal-x... Have fun with the Xlibre community. The fact that the proposer has to include such disclaimer also says a lot about the Xlibre upstream community.
        em-bee 1y ago
- phendrenad2 1y ago
  If anyone's wondering if the above is true, but doesn't want to take the time to click the link and dig into the accusations and truths: It's mostly sophistry, accusing him of vague things that sound worse than they are. I.E. "defending WWII Germany" (which sounds like he's saying Nazis were the good guys, if you don't bother to read his actual posts.)
dsp_person 1y ago
from phoronix: Noted changes with XLibre 25.0 include: a) Xnamespace extension: a novel approach for isolating clients from different security domains (eg. containers) into separate X11 namespaces, where they can't hurt each other that seems significant, I wonder why xorg hasn't implemented something like it so far.
- znpy 1y ago
  My understading is that contributions were being sabotaged by some Red Hat wayland fanatics that managed take over freedesktop.org and forcefully halt contributions to Xorg. Otherwise we would probably have had this years ago.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302650 The X.Org Server just got forked (announcing XLibre) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502
- em-bee 1y ago
  if you search for xlibre you'll find a dozen more.
em-bee 1y ago
this has been marked as a duplicate before, but it's not. other articles are talking about the Xlibre project it's potential, etc. this article talks about the effect of the fork on Xorg itself. which is a very different topic, and one that is worth talking about. for example i remember the fork of GCC and how it affected its development processes. unlike GCC i doubt that Xlibre will be merged back, but it has an influence on Xorg nonetheless. what are your thoughts?
- pvg 1y ago
  Much of this article is about the same drama which is dupey by HN dupes algebra. Maybe it's worth talking about the effects when such effects occur meaningfully.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    ok, i suppose it is to early to tell whether the current flurry of activity on Xorg is just temporary or whether the effect will last. unlike GCC, X11 is on the way to obsolescence. and so one question is if there is even a point to continued development. but i also have the sense that Xorg devs would want to prevent Xlibre from growing. and the only way to counteract that is increased activity to show that Xorg is still under active maintenance, because the calls to replace Xorg with Xlibre are already coming, not just from those involved in Xibre but from others who are unaware of the drama and just see that Xlibre is actively maintained while Xorg isn't anymore (in their eyes).
    - bitwize 1y ago
      It's not the only way to counteract that. You can do what the Alpine devs have done: make it a code-of-conduct violation to adopt Xlibre.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        WAT? that's even more insane. i am not supporting xlibre, nor am i an alpine user, but no one gets to tell me which projects i support and which i don't. that would be like cancelling daryl davis for befriending members of the KKK.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

25 points by em-bee 1y ago

Was hoping this would go by unnoticed. This dude is a hopeless weirdo, who mindlessly refactors for no real reason, and breaks stuff. The insane conspiracy minded anti-big tech aspect is deeply disturbing. Replying to some of the most respectable food hard working nice people on the planet who have carried huge X subsystems forward for decades with love and care with just frothing madness. There aren't words for the scorn this insanity & batshit deserve. This comment and first reply have some solid other discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303328 I frelling love the reg, love me a good rag. It was intensely intensely disappointing to see they carrying so much water for this deeply problematic antisocial troublemaker.

em-bee 1y ago
granted. the interesting question now is, why and how this will affect Xorg. at this point any hope for this to go unnoticed is lost, and how Xorg devs are responding will have a significant influence on how this will all play out.
throwaway7356 1y ago
There is a significant community for which these are not insane conspiracy theories, but real concerns. Just take anyone watching Lunduke or from anti-systemd/anti-Red-Hat/anti-woke distributions like OpenMandriva or Devuan and you will find many people welcoming this fork specifically because of that.
- em-bee 1y ago
  i find the discussions of weigelts political opinions not really interesting. they will probably lead to his eventual downfall, but these discussions hide the real problem: that a significant group of people are unhappy with X11 support going away. Xlibre may just be successful despite weigelts opinions (and maybe even attract some supporters because of them) and the only way for Xorg/wayland to counter the rise of Xlibre is to address the concerns and not to write off Xlibre because of weigelt.
  - throwaway7356 1y ago
    No, people flock to Xlibre because of Weigelt's political opinions. They are unhappy because Wayland is developed by "woke" people, thus the need to continue to use X11.
    - OCASMv2 1y ago
      How do know? Did you ask everyone involved for their motivations?
    - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
      My feel is that this is 100% dead on, that the agitators have found their mark to radicalize, anger, and make proper pests of folks who want to be tilting and mad. Politics lead here; anything for their anti-causes.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        well here is the proof to the contrary: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/X11Libre#Disclaimer https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/X11Libre#Disclaimer Summary Replace the X.Org X11 Xserver (xorg-x11-xserver) with the X11Libre (XLibre) Xserver, an actively maintained fork. Disclaimer The Change Owner does NOT share or endorse upstream's political views! Given that those can be found even in the upstream project-wide README.md, the Change Owner feels obliged to make this clarification.
        throwaway7356 1y ago
        https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f43-change-proposal-x11libre-system-wide/156330/36 https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f43-change-proposal-x... Have fun with the Xlibre community. The fact that the proposer has to include such disclaimer also says a lot about the Xlibre upstream community.
        em-bee 1y ago
phendrenad2 1y ago
If anyone's wondering if the above is true, but doesn't want to take the time to click the link and dig into the accusations and truths: It's mostly sophistry, accusing him of vague things that sound worse than they are. I.E. "defending WWII Germany" (which sounds like he's saying Nazis were the good guys, if you don't bother to read his actual posts.)

dsp_person 1y ago

from phoronix: Noted changes with XLibre 25.0 include: a) Xnamespace extension: a novel approach for isolating clients from different security domains (eg. containers) into separate X11 namespaces, where they can't hurt each other that seems significant, I wonder why xorg hasn't implemented something like it so far.

znpy 1y ago
My understading is that contributions were being sabotaged by some Red Hat wayland fanatics that managed take over freedesktop.org and forcefully halt contributions to Xorg. Otherwise we would probably have had this years ago.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302650 The X.Org Server just got forked (announcing XLibre) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502

em-bee 1y ago
if you search for xlibre you'll find a dozen more.

em-bee 1y ago

this has been marked as a duplicate before, but it's not. other articles are talking about the Xlibre project it's potential, etc. this article talks about the effect of the fork on Xorg itself. which is a very different topic, and one that is worth talking about. for example i remember the fork of GCC and how it affected its development processes. unlike GCC i doubt that Xlibre will be merged back, but it has an influence on Xorg nonetheless. what are your thoughts?

pvg 1y ago
Much of this article is about the same drama which is dupey by HN dupes algebra. Maybe it's worth talking about the effects when such effects occur meaningfully.
- em-bee 1y ago
  ok, i suppose it is to early to tell whether the current flurry of activity on Xorg is just temporary or whether the effect will last. unlike GCC, X11 is on the way to obsolescence. and so one question is if there is even a point to continued development. but i also have the sense that Xorg devs would want to prevent Xlibre from growing. and the only way to counteract that is increased activity to show that Xorg is still under active maintenance, because the calls to replace Xorg with Xlibre are already coming, not just from those involved in Xibre but from others who are unaware of the drama and just see that Xlibre is actively maintained while Xorg isn't anymore (in their eyes).
  - bitwize 1y ago
    It's not the only way to counteract that. You can do what the Alpine devs have done: make it a code-of-conduct violation to adopt Xlibre.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      WAT? that's even more insane. i am not supporting xlibre, nor am i an alpine user, but no one gets to tell me which projects i support and which i don't. that would be like cancelling daryl davis for befriending members of the KKK.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]