After reading this post, make sure to read the follow-up
Please do not go harassing the person.
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.