Xlibre [LWN.net]

Xlibre

Posted Jun 10, 2025 19:58 UTC (Tue) by ubhofmann (subscriber, #47368)
Parent article: Ubuntu 25.10 to drop support for GNOME on Xorg

At the same time, a fork of X11 appears on GitHub: https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver.git. The Register has more details: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/

to post comments

Xlibre

Posted Jun 10, 2025 20:06 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

I wonder if it would end up in the Tauthon-like state, with one commit per year (to make it compatible with a new GCC) and nothing beyond that…

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 21:00 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (2 responses)

So what if it does? There's nothing wrong with software that's finished and therefore needs little maintenance :)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 21:05 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Not if we are talking about software that needs to interact with hardware.

If you want something that may only ever work on retro systems you may simply pick Windows XP or RedHat 9…

Xlibre

Posted Jun 12, 2025 18:53 UTC (Thu) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Almost all of the hardware-specific graphics code is in the kernel these days :)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 12, 2025 5:34 UTC (Thu) by alexeiz (guest, #95579) [Link] (1 responses)

metux submitted like a thousand commits to Xorg over the last several years. So one commit a year scenario is just your imagination.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 13:31 UTC (Sun) by RGBCube (subscriber, #175223) [Link]

metux submitting a thousand patches can only make the (already horrible) X codebase even worse!

Xlibre

Posted Jun 10, 2025 20:13 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (29 responses)

The reason for this fork is that its creator was banned from further commits to the main xorg repo due to repeatedly submitting PRs that introduced pretty serious regressions -- of the sort that would have been prevented had the code been even _run_ once.

So by all means, fork away, but they're going to have a really hard time convincing anyone else to care.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 10, 2025 21:20 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (19 responses)

> So by all means, fork away, but they're going to have a really hard time convincing anyone else to care.

...and when your fork has an incompatible binary ABI (+API?), you're not going to be compatible with existing proprietary drivers (eg NVIDIA) which has been the primary reason for folks needing to stick with a native xserver.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 8:21 UTC (Wed) by parametricpoly (subscriber, #143903) [Link] (18 responses)

It's also a bit late to the party. Distros are switching to Wayland exclusive DEs (Gnome, Ubuntu) and Wayland basically "works" for quite many use cases as a daily driver. The network effect is directing people to go forward.

If you do objective analysis, Xorg has some limitations and Wayland comes with another set of limitations. Extending and improving X will face some issues as other platforms using X still use the old APIs. At this point it's hard to justify moving back to X even if it will get fixes and updates. Also what would you do with a windowing system if the apps are abandoning it? I'm looking at something like lightdm or sddm. The repos are basically dead.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 12, 2025 19:53 UTC (Thu) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (17 responses)

I haven't ever used Wayland and don't have any plans to do so anytime soon, and I expect many other plan to continue using X indefinitely. It appears Wayland is still immature in areas such as running on headless servers, automating user input, taking screenshots, and copying and pasting from the clipboard.

Maybe one day they'll be able to reliably implement those cutting edge features.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 2:49 UTC (Fri) by numgmt (guest, #167446) [Link] (16 responses)

GNOME Remote Desktop does headless RDP way better than any Xorg solution I could find. It's GNOME-exclusive, but hey, it works for my use case, and that was the quality of solution I needed that nothing else (e.g. XRDP) met.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 10:26 UTC (Fri) by lindi (subscriber, #53135) [Link]

I’m also a big fan of headless gnome remote desktop. I’ve used it for several months now in debian testing and it has been very stable. I hope in the future we could get some public key based authentication as well.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 12:20 UTC (Sat) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (14 responses)

Can you use it to "remote" the window of a single application, instead of a whole desktop? (This is one killer feature of X11 that I use almost every day).

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 13:07 UTC (Sat) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (12 responses)

> Can you use it to "remote" the window of a single application, instead of a whole desktop? (This is one killer feature of X11 that I use almost every day).

It's not really a killer feature of X11, not for a long time. Waypipe[1] exists and in practice works much better over mediocre links than X11 SSH forwarding, much less actual X11 network transparency, ever did.

[1]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 10:30 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (11 responses)

Thanks, good to know for the dreaded day I cannot use X11 any more. But this seems to be a complex 3.party program that might not be available in all installations at both the client and server ends. With X11, you get the functionality out of the box.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 11:03 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (10 responses)

> But this seems to be a complex 3.party program that might not be available in all installations at both the client and server ends. With X11, you get the functionality out of the box.

The thing is, you don't.

`ssh -X` is as much of a third-party program as `waypipe` is.

And in the off-chance if you're **actually** talking about X11's **actual** network transparency, i.e., `DISPLAY=somehost:0`, then that stopped working satisfactorily even longer ago than `ssh -X` (unless you limit yourself to Motif and Tk, I guess).

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 12:37 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (4 responses)

ssh is nowadays a common piece of infrastructure with multiple uses, so it can be assumed to be available. Rather like sh, ls, cat etc. Waypipe is specialised, complex, and has a ton of dependencies. X11 remoting has worked well for my needs, obviously I am not running games or video editors through it. Anyway, I'll stop grumbling now.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 13:48 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> ssh is nowadays a common piece of infrastructure with multiple uses, so it can be assumed to be available. Rather like sh, ls, cat etc. Waypipe is specialised, complex, and has a ton of dependencies.

So... [random X11 application] isn't specialized, complex, with a ton of dependencies? I mean, if you're trying to run an X11 application remotely, you're going to need at minimum full client xlib+whatever else on one side, and an running xserver+whatever else on the other side. In other words, by definition, both sides need to have everything necessary to run said application, and *all of it* is outside the scope of what ssh provides (ie a forwarded TCP connection)

Along that line, nothing prevents [Portable] OpenSSH adding support for wrapping waypipe, eg by adding -W and associated configuration options. There's plenty of precedence, not just with X11 (via -X) and various authentication agents but also things like scp/sftp which work by forking off separate executables (on both sides) and shuffling data between the two.

(I would also point out that openssh's -X option claims to support interacting with X11 "Security extensions" by default; I don't know exactly what that entails under the hood but it's clearly more than just setting up a port forward and setting $DISPLAY on the remote side)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 1:50 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

> openssh's -X option claims to support interacting with X11 "Security extensions"

I think this refers to running xauth to set an MIT Magic Cookie value in ~/.Xauthority which is like an API token that prevents other users on the same system from just connecting to your forwarded X11 port on localhost and rickrolling (at best) your screen.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 23, 2025 8:29 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

The SECURITY extension allows certain clients to be marked as "untrusted" which prevents them from being able to spy on input events, take screenshots of other clients and so on.

Unfortunately many clients break completely under such restrictions. For many years, Debian patched OpenSSH to disable the use of the SECURITY extension by deafult. Nowadays I think the situation is a bit better but I've not used X11 forwarding for a long time so haven't verified.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 16:11 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

Of course, OpenSSH (not just ssh, but very specifically OpenSSH) is going to be more widely available than Waypipe, simply by virtue of being an older and more established technology (as well as historical precedent). However, we weren't discussing that:

>> <...> With X11, you get the functionality out of the box. <...>

What we were discussing is that both are structurally *third-party software*. There is nothing conceptually "out-of-the-box" about `ssh -X`, not any more than Waypipe. Whether the latter is significantly more specialized and complex is in the eye of the beholder.

> X11 remoting has worked well for my needs

Nobody was disputing that. We were talking about whether it actually is a "killer feature".

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 13:13 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

Is there a replacement for XPRA?

I still use ssh -X for some very graphically-limited apps - xterm mostly - but for anything using a modern toolkit you really need XPRA to get good performance. And the persistence / immunity to transient network issues/moves is a nice bonus in some cases; and absolutely essential in other cases. E.g., I use xpra to access the same instance of an app between work and home, without having to restart the app and my flow in it.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 16:13 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

> Is there a replacement for XPRA?
>
> I still use ssh -X for some very graphically-limited apps - xterm mostly - but for anything using a modern toolkit you really need XPRA to get good performance.

Waypipe does not need anything like Xpra to get good performance; you get it by default.

> And the persistence / immunity to transient network issues/moves is a nice bonus in some cases

There is no persistence, however. Earlier versions of Waypipe had rudimentary support for reconnection, but it was since dropped — not sure why, perhaps lack of interest on the sole developer's part.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 1:58 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I think in other cases with Wayland the compositors just support RDP or VNC output, VNC being slow but simple and RDP working well over WAN links with various acceleration options available in the protocol (maybe including just encoding as a video stream, same as any modern WebRTC video conferencing and desktop sharing system) if the server takes advantage of them, degrading to something like VNC if not. I think Waypipe is more for the single-app forwarding use case (although I believe RDP protocol is capable of single-app forwarding), and I'd be super happy when it gets integrated directly into Portable OpenSSH or as a Linux-distro maintained extension for the popular platforms.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 8:50 UTC (Tue) by vasvir (subscriber, #92389) [Link] (1 responses)

Well there is wprs (xpra for wayland): https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

I use it as my daily driver and while it has its issues it is workable...

I have filed some bug reports and some of them have been fixed.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 9:50 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Great news, thanks for the link!

Xlibre

Posted Jun 23, 2025 4:20 UTC (Mon) by wperkins (guest, #767) [Link]

Yeah! This is one feature that I have used every day for many years!

Xlibre

Posted Jun 12, 2025 7:25 UTC (Thu) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (8 responses)

> The reason for this fork is that its creator was banned from further commits to the main xorg repo due to repeatedly submitting PRs that introduced pretty serious regressions -- of the sort that would have been prevented had the code been even _run_ once.

That’s not quite accurate. He was banned from gitlab.freedesktop.org as a whole for violating the corresponding CoC, not for the low quality of his xserver MRs.

(As a member of the xserver project, I do wish the project itself had stood firmer against his flood of mostly-churn MRs though)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 12, 2025 19:46 UTC (Thu) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (7 responses)

Any details on this? He clearly has some weird and disturbing political views, but did he actually _do_ anything, or is this a thoughtcrime situation?

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 0:45 UTC (Fri) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (6 responses)

I don’t know any more details than you. The reasons for CoC action are generally not shared publicly.

The freedesktop.org CoC committee generally bans users only after multiple infractions and unfruitful mediation attempts, so he most certainly has „done something“ though.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 9:35 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (5 responses)

"Justice must be done, and must be seen to be done".

Behind closed door enforcement may be problematic.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 10:42 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

> Behind closed door enforcement may be problematic.

Open enforcement may be problematic.

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Especially given that - in many cases - SWIFT enforcement may be necessary to protect the victims, and sometimes that can harm the perpetrators more than necessary. That sentiment has been expressed in these comments. And as a gentoo user I get the impression the project was seriously harmed (a good few years back) because some "bad actors" weren't dealt with quickly.

If you're in a position where you need to say "stop this NOW!", the last thing you need is a load of public bike-shedding. At the end of the day, you need a BDFL who you trust really is B. I don't think I'd do a particularly good job, but I like PJ's definition she used for Groklaw. "If I wouldn't have it in my living room, I won't have it on Groklaw". Simple, clear (pretty much), and there's no comeback.

Cheers,
Wol

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 10:52 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

Didn't say it had to be slow, or had to be by committee or vote. It should be stated what for and why though, should it not?

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 12:41 UTC (Fri) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (2 responses)

While I agree that public decision-making is important for good community-building, I think this thread is wandering increasingly off topic. Let's leave it here.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 13, 2025 14:14 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Course. I think at some point it could be useful to have an article in and around this topic, if there is some appropriate news to thread it around. There have been a number of cases of CoC enforcements that you've reported on where the grounds and process has been murky (and acknowledged as such in at least 1 case I think). Some way to distill the meta issue of "Justice should be /seen/ to be done" out of the various individual cases and see what different approaches there have been and pros/cons, might be useful. Comments will be fun too I'm sure. ;)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 23, 2025 13:32 UTC (Mon) by Wildfurangelplumes (guest, #177995) [Link]

I get the push for transparency, but projects like freedesktop.org aren't democracies. They're run by maintainers who have the right to manage their space, and that includes enforcing CoCs without turning it into a public spectacle. IMO open source doesn't mean every decision needs community consensus, behind-closed-doors processes are often the only way to avoid bikeshedding and harassment. As for Xlibre, the fork isn't the problem in itself. It's the fact that it breaks compatibility and the dev has a history of publicly toxic behavior, including anti-DEI rhetoric. You can fork, sure. But people are also allowed to say "no thanks."

Xlibre

Posted Jun 10, 2025 22:27 UTC (Tue) by alatiera (guest, #154895) [Link] (36 responses)

Could you all please stop linking to a fork without any technical merit and for the cherry on top, a fork run by a lunatic that parrots fascists talking points in every mailing list and issue tracker he is allowed to participate in.

Example from the Devuan mailing list in 2018 even:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists....

Then we've all seen the LKML thread, and the whole spew of hatred in the Xlibre fork.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 2:33 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (34 responses)

Could you please stop abusing the term "fascist" and injecting your own politics into a discussion, while decrying someone else for having injected his politics into a different discussion?

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 4:59 UTC (Wed) by stephanlachnit (subscriber, #151361) [Link]

Usaully I agree that one should be careful with these terms, but have you read the email? He basically blames WW2 on the british...

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 5:09 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

DUDE, read the link first. He is defending Germany's conduct during World War 2 and blaming the start of World War 2 on British aggression. For some reason, he is doing this on a Linux distribution mailing list.

I roll my eyes at "everyone I don't like must be Hitler" groupthink as much as the next Player Character, but this is not that.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 5:27 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (31 responses)

That's not my point. My point is that he brings politics into a non-political discussion in order to dis someone else for bringing politics into a different discussion.

As for the accuracy of his statement, if you want to get pedantic ... Fascism was Mussolini, not Hitler, whose bag was Nazism.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 5:43 UTC (Wed) by alatiera (guest, #154895) [Link] (1 responses)

There was a time where people would be ashamed to throw it back and defend fascists in public. Too bad for all the rest of us that they let you use the Internet unsupervised.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 11:24 UTC (Wed) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link]

This gives me "everyone not joining my crusade is an enemy" vibes. I had that - antifascism - differently in my head.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 11, 2025 6:45 UTC (Wed) by ebee_matteo (guest, #165284) [Link] (28 responses)

Extreme political views are very relevant when you ask for public support for your project. Which in the future might also involve corporate funding if successful.

We need to stop this nonsense of "code is non-political, completely separated from the people producing it and their views." It's like "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

This whole idea that ethical considerations can be silenced in favor of technological superiority and thus will usher in an utopia where technology will solve all of humanity's problems is naive and childish. It's what the broligarchs believe. And look what it brought us until now.

I don't want to be associated to a right wing nazi nutjob. And I thank the parent for posting a clear link which proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. Now I can just forget about this fork and move on.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 1:15 UTC (Sat) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (27 responses)

Code _IS_ non-political and is completely separate from the people producing it and their views. This guy sounds like a crank, and perhaps a Nazi-sympathizing crank, but, if XLibre runs better than XOrg on my machine, I'll use it, and his political views would not deter me from contributing to his project. That's what tolerance means, and I believe in tolerance.

You don't have to agree with me, because you have no obligation to practice tolerance when volunteering your time. In a professional environment, though, refusing to work with a coworker because you don't like his politics will likely get you fired. If your intolerance instead gets the victim of your discrimination fired, that's illegal in California and many other places, and I hope any applicable law is enforced against both you and your employer. It should be illegal everywhere.

In the event the law does not stop you or your employer, rest assured that I and many others will boycott your employer in retaliation. I haven't used Firefox since Brendan Eich, nor Chrome since James Damore.

This is the only issue I've ever boycott a company or organization over in the name of society, because it's the only thing I've seen organizations do that is a serious enough attack on society where I've felt I have a personal duty to retaliate. I feel I have that duty because society only works if we can work together, and cranks have just as much right to make a living as everyone else.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 2:44 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Code _IS_ non-political and is completely separate from the people producing it and their views.

> if XLibre runs better than XOrg on my machine, I'll use it, and his political views would not deter me from contributing to his project. That's what tolerance means, and I believe in tolerance.

Mighty big words...

> In the event the law does not stop you or your employer, rest assured that I and many others will boycott your employer in retaliation. I haven't used Firefox since Brendan Eich, nor Chrome since James Damore.

... except you don't practice what you preach.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 6:53 UTC (Sat) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

You can believe what you want and express it, whatever that is. However, if you punish other people for believing what they want, or expressing it, I want you stopped and punished for that.

Boycotting companies that punish their employees for expressing what they believe is practicing exactly what I preach.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 12:35 UTC (Sat) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (11 responses)

There's politics, and then there's outright nazism.

It's not as if we're having a minute debate about income tax or building regulations or somesuch everyday politics, or even about contentious topics such as immigration.

We're talking about a guy who openly and publicly sympathises with and advocates for nazism, that is, effectively, murdering other people for no other reason than their religion or skin colour.

Man, you've got to have a limit to your tolerance at this point at least. If you haven't, how can we ever hope to make society a safe place for everyone to live in?

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 17:47 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (10 responses)

> We're talking about a guy who openly and publicly sympathises with and advocates for nazism, that is, effectively, murdering other people for no other reason than their religion or skin colour.

Defending Germany in WW2 is certainly troubling, but he also puts this text on his fork:

> 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 an boring average person. Anybody who's interested in bringing X forward is welcome.

If those are the principles by which he actually runs his project, I see no problem.

> Man, you've got to have a limit to your tolerance at this point at least. If you haven't, how can we ever hope to make society a safe place for everyone to live in?

Crime is something you do, not something you believe, or something you say. If someone starts _doing_ things that hurt people, rather than _saying_ things that hurt people's _feelings_, _then_ they can be thrown in jail. We can't throw them in jail just because they believe or advocate for horrible things. That's a violation of human rights.

Philosophically extending that principle, I believe it's also wrong to use economic warfare to punish things that aren't crimes. That's just the majority putting on a "mob" mask to hide its "government" face and doing the exact thing government isn't supposed to do.

On a more practical level, while people who believe horrible things are not in jail, because they haven't done anything wrong, what purpose do you think is served by conducting economic warfare against them by attacking their ability to earn a living? Someone who is forced to interact with other people in a professional setting may, over time, change his discriminatory beliefs. Interaction with "the Other" is actually one of the only things that has the potential to change beliefs like that. Also, people with money and a stable existence are less likely to see acting on their terrible beliefs and going out in a blaze of glory as an attractive option. People who have nothing to lose, not so much.

In before someone says "but u boycott companies who fire people so u hippocrit": no, I'm not. Governments throw people in jail who commit kidnapping and false imprisonment, and that's not hypocritical. I'm just fighting arson with fire.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 19:14 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

> We can't throw them in jail just because they believe or advocate for horrible things. That's a violation of human rights.

Is someone throwing him in jail? I don't see anyone (in the US) claiming that. A German mentioned having to report him at least, but the laws there around such views are quite different.

> Someone who is forced to interact with other people in a professional setting may, over time, change his discriminatory beliefs.

Isn't Masterpiece Cakeshop exactly the opposite: you can choose to not economically interact with someone based on your religious convictions? But political beliefs are not so blessed? I suppose political beliefs are not (generally) a protected class in the US, so maybe it *is* OK in that sense…but then it cuts both ways and deciding to not interact based on politics is fine?

> …what purpose do you think is served by conducting economic warfare against them by attacking their ability to earn a living?

Expressing disapproval of the product/company/processes? Am I obligated to buy something from anyone hawking some widget if I can't find a reason to need or want their widget because that would "[harm] their ability to earn a living"? If I find their widget as actively harmful to the well-being of my community (let's say they sell asbestos/leaded gasoline for vehicles/leaded paint in the gap between knowing it is harmful and the laws enforcing it come into force; perhaps PFAS chemicals would be the modern equivalent), do I have to stay silent because saying something might cause such harm? What if those harms come in the process of the *production* of their widget (e.g., child/slave labor) even if the widget itself is benign (e.g., shoes)? What if I really just don't want to funnel more attention/money/power to an entity I just personally find distateful (Soros, Gates, Musk, Nestlé, take your pick; there's a "villain" for any political view in business today).

Any of those things, on their own, are personal decisions. Stating my decisions publicly is a First Amendment right. It also mentions the right to "assembly" to build a group of like-minded individuals to discuss it. While the First Amendment says the right to "petition the government" (say, get laws passed to ban child labor), why would espousing such views to fellow citizens as such a group (through, say, advertising or social media) not also be protected under the general "speech" category as well?

> Philosophically extending that principle, I believe it's also wrong to use economic warfare to punish things that aren't crimes.

Will you speak out about using threatening lawsuits over the exercise of First Amendment rights (e.g., X suing ad agencies for refusing to buy adspace on X)? Is that not "economic warfare to punish things that aren't crimes" as well?

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 19:59 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

> Is someone throwing him in jail? I don't see anyone (in the US) claiming that. A German mentioned having to report him at least, but the laws there around such views are quite different.

Yeah, some guy said he "had" to report him which is almost certainly not true. I didn't realize he was German when I read what he wrote; it looks a lot less kooky now since of course if you're German you're going to care about British war crimes against your country (and I'm sure there probably were some). Anyway, he didn't actually deny the Holocaust happened, whether he thinks that or not, so he's going to be fine legally even if he gets reported.

> Isn't Masterpiece Cakeshop exactly the opposite: you can choose to not economically interact with someone based on your religious convictions? But political beliefs are not so blessed? I suppose political beliefs are not (generally) a protected class in the US, so maybe it *is* OK in that sense…but then it cuts both ways and deciding to not interact based on politics is fine?

All Masterpiece Cakeshop says stands for is that you can't be forced to use your creative talents to express something you don't believe. The gay couple in Masterpiece Cakeshop was free to buy any cake in the baker's store. They just weren't free to force the baker to make a custom cake containing a message the baker did not want to say.

> Expressing disapproval of the product/company/processes?

I'm not talking about an environmental group running ads saying people shouldn't buy from a company because it doesn't use dolphin-safe tuna. I'm talking about mobs creating giant shitstorms to coerce companies to fire individuals the mob has decided should be unpersons. I'm talking, specifically, about Brendan Eich and James Damore. Eich donated to a political cause the mob didn't like, and he ended up cast out of the project he'd been a part of since 1995. Damore wrote an essay containing political views the mob didn't like, and he ended up fired from his job even though he was probably good at it.

When this happens, it's not the government itself doing the dirty work, but letting mobs economically ruin people for expressive conduct or political advocacy still diminishes their de facto ability to exercise their right to free speech. That's why California's political discrimination law would be a good idea for other jurisdictions to implement.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 20:00 UTC (Sun) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (2 responses)

> Crime is something you do, not something you believe, or something you say. If someone starts _doing_ things that hurt people, rather than _saying_ things that hurt people's _feelings_, _then_ they can be thrown in jail. We can't throw them in jail just because they believe or advocate for horrible things. That's a violation of human rights.

Under German law, we can, and we do. See §130 StGB, Volksverhetzung.

And, as a German, I'm mighty happy that we do, because I believe that there's no human right to deny human rights to others, nor that anyone should be free to publicly incite genocide or downplay the Shoa.

For history taught us that we should really not wait until someone starts _doing_ this.

Crime can also something you say, for words do have power. Which is why we care so much about freedom of speech, after all.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 21:41 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

> Under German law, we can, and we do. See §130 StGB, Volksverhetzung.

Yup, that's how Europe violates people's human rights!

> And, as a German, I'm mighty happy that we do, because I believe that there's no human right to deny human rights to others, nor that anyone should be free to publicly incite genocide or downplay the Shoa.

AfD just gained 69 seats in your legislature and is the second-largest party now, so how's that political oppression working out for ya?

> Crime can also something you say, for words do have power.

See, that's how Europe doesn't understand what free speech means. Making "something you say" a crime because you don't like what is being said is a direct violation of free speech, and you guys just don't get that.

You'll figure it out eventually, though. You're helping AfD and its friends gain power because they can appeal to both moderate right-wingers and Nazis. The moderate right-wingers like what AfD is saying, and the Nazis know AfD can't say what it really means. You'll eventually figure that out and change your tune.

Or you won't, the firewall will break, and AfD will become part of a governing coalition. Then, they'll turn that nice government oppression cannon you've built right back atcha, and you'll _REALLY_ figure out what free speech means :) Serves you right if you're dense enough to let things get that far, I guess...

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 5:54 UTC (Mon) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link]

I'm not sure where you're from, but presuming it is the U.S. that's a tad arrogant a comment, considering the historic and current situation of minorities in the US, or, well, your current government.

We could have a discussion about the different interpretation of human and civil rights in the legal philosophy and the constitution in the US and Germany or the EU, or about the degree of practical political freedom in either country, but not this way. I'm sorry but I feel like this is not going anywhere.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 7:44 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

> > We're talking about a guy who openly and publicly sympathises with and advocates for nazism, that is, effectively, murdering other people for no other reason than their religion or skin colour.

> Defending Germany in WW2 is certainly troubling, but he also puts this text on his fork:

Coming from a German Jewish family, can we please stop conflating the Germans with the Nazis. Politics is horribly complicated, and lumping unrelated groups together in the same bucket does not help. Hitler wasn't even German!

We do throw people in jail for just saying things. It's called "incitement to violence", where you get other people to do your dirty work for you.

At the end of the day, you always have to draw a line, and it's *never* a clean line. Call it the Heisenberg principle, call it the second law of thermodynamics, call it the "pick two, any two" rule. If you want tolerance you *have* to shut down calls for intolerance. Where I draw the line will almost certainly differ from you.

I don't want to know your political/religious/sexual beliefs. If I don't know, I can't discriminate based on them. If you wear them on your sleeve, I will do my best to ignore them. If you shove them in my face I certainly will discriminate. Other people will take a different attitude ...

Cheers,
Wol

Useful shorthand for the Nazis in power

Posted Jun 16, 2025 8:47 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

Coming from a German Jewish family, can we please stop conflating the Germans with the Nazis. Politics is horribly complicated, and lumping unrelated groups together in the same bucket does not help. Hitler wasn't even German!

I use "Third Reich" when referring to the period when Germany was governed by the Nazis; it's still clear what's meant, but doesn't trigger this sort of response.

I don't want to know your political/religious/sexual beliefs. If I don't know, I can't discriminate based on them. If you wear them on your sleeve, I will do my best to ignore them. If you shove them in my face I certainly will discriminate. Other people will take a different attitude ...

This is what unconscious bias is all about, and there's training that's all about ensuring that you consciously adjust for your own biases. It's unlawful to discriminate on certain characteristics, even if you do so unconsciously, after all.

Useful shorthand for the Nazis in power

Posted Jun 16, 2025 9:43 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

"Unconscious bias" aka "like likes like".

(To some extent) I can't help but know things like your race. So that's the "if you wear it on your sleeve I will do my best to ignore it". My neighbours are dark skinned and wear turbans. I can't help but be aware of their race/religion, but they're nice people and we get on well. "You're you and I'm me".

If either of us started pushing our views, the friendly relationship would probably break down, but imho that is (a) disrespectful, and (b) as a fundamentalist-inclined Christian, it's also unChristian! "By their works shall ye know them", not by shouting your views from the housetop!

Cheers,
Wol

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 2:05 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

Off-ramp reply: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=64...

Xlibre

Posted Jun 17, 2025 2:32 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

Thanks for moving this elsewhere. We appreciate it.

jake

Xlibre

Posted Jun 14, 2025 14:02 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

That is a very bizarre position to take. From what I read:

If someone has views you consider unpalatable, and their employer doesn't censure them for said views, then you boycott the employer's software.
But if someone has views you consider unpalatable, but doesn't have an employer, then you happily use that person's software.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 4:35 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I guess people contain multitudes...

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 4:51 UTC (Sun) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (3 responses)

> If someone has views you consider unpalatable, and their employer doesn't censure them for said views, then you boycott the employer's software.

If I'm reading it correctly, they're actually arguing the opposite: They want to boycott the employers who *do* censure people for specific views (Damore and Eich both got fired).

Which is at least internally consistent. Silly, and probably results in boycotting all US employers if you apply it completely literally (see e.g. [1] and [2]), but internally consistent.

[1]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/490/228/#tab-...
[2]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/590/17-1618/#...

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 13:34 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Oh, I see, I stand corrected.

It's still inconsistent, though. Companies are not governments and they are allowed to express an opinion too. Being fired by a company for something you've said is not a violation of the Constitution.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 14:40 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Being fired by a company for something you've said is not a violation of the Constitution.

XKCD #1357 comes to mind.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 14:45 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Of course, that comes with the thing that the people who actually do the firing are themselves expressing a particular belief. Effectively, you're punishing the people who chose to express their beliefs by refusing to work with someone for daring to have "bad" beliefs…

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 12:57 UTC (Sun) by ebee_matteo (guest, #165284) [Link] (6 responses)

> If your intolerance instead gets the victim of your discrimination fired, that's illegal in California and many other places, and I hope any applicable law is enforced against both you and your employer. It should be illegal everywhere.

Typical American arrogance, then.

Here in Germany, the views above under German alw require me to report this guy to the police, and have him arrested.

Just because the US has this wackiness of "absolute free speech" it does not mean that the rest 7 billion humans outside the US apply your same laws.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 14:46 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

As I see it, Free Speech is one of three things that are subject to the "pick any two" law of nature.

And personally, it's also the one I value LEAST!

The other two are the right to have a functional society that cares for each other, and the right to seek/be wealthy.

(I'd like to value all three roughly equal, but that means compromises in all directions - something a lot of people seem unable to handle.)

So the American obsession with Free Speech and Wealth is basically driving the destruction of society, as more and more people even in the first world fall into deeper and deeper poverty.

Cheers,
Wol

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 17:58 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (3 responses)

> Here in Germany, the views above under German alw require me to report this guy to the police, and have him arrested.

Oh my God, German law requires citizens to inform on each other like that? I didn't know your society had fallen so far. Again.

And, in fact, I still don't know that. Can you point me to this "anyone who doesn't report a crime is guilty of a crime" statute? I'm going to have a hard time believing such a ridiculous law exists without proof.

Oh, also, since your Nazi stand-in party just came in second in the 2025 federal elections, it doesn't seem like all your political repression is working very well, now does it? But you're just gonna keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result, aren't you? I wonder how that's going to work out for you guys. Guess we'll find out!

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 20:18 UTC (Sun) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (2 responses)

At this point, this conversation has gotten well off course from the article and is straying from "polite, respectful, and informative". This goes for this comment as well as several up-thread.

Let's end this here, elsewhere, in this article, and in future comment threads and articles. Comments like "typical $country-name arrogance" and "I didn't know your society had fallen so far" are never appropriate for LWN under any comment thread.

Xlibre

Posted Jun 15, 2025 21:47 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Gotcha. I made an off-ramp: https://soylentnews.org/~linuxrocks123/journal/19416

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 7:53 UTC (Mon) by Subsentient (guest, #142918) [Link]

Blernchlboogeržensqüizûløid

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 5:31 UTC (Mon) by donald.buczek (subscriber, #112892) [Link]

> Here in Germany, the views above under German alw require me to report this guy to the police, and have him arrested.

I know that the discussion here is supposed to be closed. I hope it is still permissible to comment on facts without passing judgment?

In Germany, there is no general obligation to report crimes. There is an obligation to report knowledge of certain particularly serious _imminent_ crimes whose execution can still be prevented. The list of these crimes is exhaustively enumerated in [§138 StGB], and crimes of expression are not included.

However, there may be additional legal obligations to report crimes based on special laws for certain professions. Civil servants may be obliged to report crimes committed in the course of their duties. Social workers and doctors may be obliged to report imminent threats to the welfare of children.

Finally, there is a general duty to protect others in [§13 StGB], which applies to persons in positions of responsibility (e.g., parents). In some circumstances, the prevention of imminent crimes is legally possible only by reporting them and not by other means of self-help.

All of this obviously serves to prevent particularly serious crimes from happening.

I would like to add that law enforcement authorities, on the other hand, are obliged to prosecute crimes (above a certain level of severity). This “principle of legality” serves to prevent arbitrariness [1].

[§138 StGB] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__138.html
[§13 StGB] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__13.html
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalit%C3%A4tsprinzip_(Strafrecht)

Xlibre

Posted Jun 16, 2025 7:49 UTC (Mon) by Subsentient (guest, #142918) [Link]

Uhhhh. Huh. Yeah. This guy is definitely a fan of the Führer.

On a linux mailing list.

Yeah.
I see the problem.