Vaxry's blog

weeb codes, :tm:

Freedesktop/RedHat's CoC team is worse than you thought.

09 IV 2024

38.1k

Before reading this, please make sure to read "part 1" of this entire story:
My previous blogpost is here

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.

Resources

The member's reply to this post pdf


Questions, comments, mistakes? Ping me a mail at vaxry [at] vaxry.net and I'll get back to ya.