Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by LightHugger 359 days ago
It absolutely is character assassination in the context of what's been happening. News sites that have praised the xlibre author for countless articles are suddenly doing a 180 because the people who pay their bills are the same people running wayland and embroiled in anti discrimination lawsuits for abusing DEI to hurt people.

That you care more about "make x11 great again" more than red hat and IBM perpetrating actual cases of racist discrimination tells me a lot about you. You're either in an echo chamber and do not have all the information or are deliberately choosing to ignore it. Either way you aren't in the morally just position you think you are.

2 comments

It's not about being morally just, it's about taking accountability for the things you say.

Everyone is allowed to say off-putting things. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that making politically-charged statements might make people a bit weary of your project. That's his prerogative - but, it's not character assassination to repeat words back to people. I'm very tired of pretending it is. I find it incredibly immature when people want to play victim for being portrayed how they themselves seemingly want to be portrayed. You want to be politically charged? Bon apetite.

"repeat words back to people" isn't the problem here though anyways, it's dishonest to pretend that's what matters here. not the mass bans, censorship, one sided articles, misinformational misinterpretations, zero acknowledgement about faces, and the insane double standards where on one side you have a guy who is "political" by saying he's anti dei and welcomes everyone of various politics and identities, and on the other hand you have the DEI corporation currently embroiled in multiple lawsuits for discriminating against real people not just based on politics but their skin color. It's an insane double standard.
> one side you have a guy who is "political" by saying he's anti dei and welcomes everyone of various politics and identities

Yes, being anti-woke and pro-Trump is political. I'm sorry, it just very obviously is. It's not a double standard because it's the same standard.

Just like DEI might piss some people off, being a Trumpie might piss some people off. If you think that making anti-woke claims or MAGA references is apolitical I don't know what to tell you. Because it is, and I was under the impression everyone on Earth should be in a agreement on that.

DEI doesn't just "piss some people off", it's outright illegal discrimination and red hat's concequences are currently working their way through the court systems. This strange equivocation from things that are clearly on completely different levels is tiresome.

If you personally are one of these people who think hurting people with racial discrimination is on the same level as typing "Together we'll make X great again!" then you are likely very deep in ideological capture. Everyone regardless of political alignment who is a decent person should be able to see that one of these matters and the other does not.

You're applying a deeply partisan interpretation of DEI to imply a very specific set of policies that are not anywhere close to universally supported by proponents of DEI. That is the problem.

If you can't see why this gets interpreted as an extremist stance by a lot of people, then that is part of the problem.

As long as those statements are in the README, it's like a giant flashing red light that the project is toxic and extremely political and pushing an agenda seen as extreme right by a lot of people.

People are free to run their projects whichever way they want, but words have consequences, and we can see in this very threat how that wording is derailing this projects chances of being considered on its technical merits.

That specific set of policies is being specifically implemented by IBM/Red hat. It's not exactly a small niche company, and it is very obviously directly related to the situation and the need to fork. It's also not a partisan interpretation, it's the only objective legal interpretation. Objective truth exists despite your efforts to pretend otherwise. Yes, there are stupid ignorant people who will see the words "DEI bad" interpret it wrongly. But it doesn't make them correct.
> News sites that have praised the xlibre author for countless articles are suddenly doing a 180

Which news sites praised the xlibre author for posting anti-vaxx stuff the the linux kernel mailing list and now shun him for posting other conspiracy theories in xlibre's README?