A fork created amid claims of censorship and anti‑DEI posturing is now in the news for the same reason: not how it renders pixels, but how it treats people.
Politics and coding don’t mix. Actually, since some people make the case that everything is political, perhaps I should reframe that: most of us don’t want partisan fights mixed into coding — or any other activities that need us to play well with others.
The trouble is, a lot of people want to take ideas that aren’t inherently political and make them so.
For example, codes of conduct aren’t being political when they require individuals in a group to treat all other members with good manners. They don’t require that you respect aspects of others that you don’t like — you are free to keep your prejudices intact. They generally only require that you keep those prejudices to yourself and respect the feelings of others.
That’s not politics; that’s just setting ground rules so more people can contribute without getting driven off.
In other words, if your project can agree on a compiler version but not on ‘don’t harass contributors,’ the problem isn’t that ‘politics’ crept in; it’s that you’ve decided civility is more controversial than toolchains.
I’m saying all of this because Enrico Weigelt and his project Xlibre, a fork of Xorg X server that’s working to keep X11 alive and modernized, is in the news again for politicizing proper manners.
On Friday, OSTechNix reported that Arch Linux recently removed XLibre’s project page from its official wiki, which created something of a stir within the Arch Linux community. The removal was because Xlibre’s website violates the distro’s Code of Conduct, specifically a section headed “Respect,” which says that users must respect other operating systems and projects, and prohibits “maligning other FOSS projects” or using “unproductive slander.”
Xlibre’s website seems to be guilty as charged.
“This fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from BigTech, are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to eliminate competition of their own products,” the page says. “Classic ’embrace, extend, extinguish’ tactics.
Xlibre’s Circular Path
This isn’t the first time that Xlibre’s been down this road. In fact, if you go back to last summer, it looks suspiciously like its origin story, which basically started on June 6, 2025, when Weigelt posted to an x.org list that he’d been banned from freedesktop.org’s GitLab instance.
“They killed my account, my git repos, my tickets in Xorg, and closed all my merge requests,” he wrote. “And then making fun on social media about it.”
He blamed Red Hat — or “Red Hat employees” — but offers no proof. As for reasons he cited, “forking Xorg and making *actual progress*,” and “talking to a journalist whose name must not be spoken in many other Red Hat/IBM tax evasion outlets, like GNOME (they’re also banning honorable long-time contributors for just mentioning that name).”
Both of those are interesting. For the former, the fork of Xorg X server wasn’t publicly known before this email, and wouldn’t be officially announced until several months later. It’s mentioned in the email’s subject — “Xlibre fork release coming in few days” — and at the bottom there’s a call to join the Xlibre mailing list, along with a link to the new project’s GitHub page.
For the latter — the unnamed journalist — Bryan Lunduke comes to mind, although Weigelt never says it. However, Lunduke did publish an article on the Xlibre fork on the same day this email was written, and has also claimed on several occasions that GNOME will ban people from its forums, GitLab, and chat for posting links to his work or for even uttering his name.
Deceitful Table Turning
Using a dog whistle that’s become much too familiar lately, Xlibre’s About page places the blame for discrimination on the organizational concept of DEI, which stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and which is meant to keep discriminatory practices in check.
“This is an independent project…,” it says, “…explicitly free of any ‘DEI’ or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who’s treating others nicely is welcomed.”
The last sentence is like an elementary school bully trying to convince a teacher they wouldn’t think about bullying their classmates.
“It doesn’t matter which country you’re coming from, your political views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you’re furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just a boring average person. Anybody who’s interested in bringing X forward is welcome.”
If that’s true, what’s wrong with having a rule that says you have to act that way?
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Given the xlibre primary dev appears to have serious axes to grind and perhaps behavioral deficits to correct, perhaps folks in the Linux world should begin examining Xenocara or similar for use (in much the same manner as OpenBSD).
I cu-ant understand your view on XLibre, while simultaneously skipping Red Hat, Wayland, the Xorg org… Communists enjoy rewriting history though. Don’t forget to change your covid mask.
You are as political as LunDuck
> For example, codes of conduct aren’t being political when they require individuals in a group to treat all other members with good manners. They don’t require that you respect aspects of others that you don’t like.
this is blatantly false. codes of conduct are being used to enforce rules against “wrong think” if you post somewhere you are conservative then it doesnt matter that you havent said anything directly derogatory, you are banned for not being liberal.
No surprise that lots of Anonymous snowflakes have been triggeerd :eyeroll: