Hyprland is an open source Wayland compositor based on wlroots, a project I started back in 2017 to make it easier to build good Wayland compositors. It’s a project which is loved by its users for its emphasis on customization and “eye candy” – beautiful graphics and animations, each configuration tailored to the unique look and feel imagined by the user who creates it. It’s a very exciting project!
Unfortunately, the effect is spoilt by an incredibly toxic and hateful community. I cannot recommend Hyprland to anyone who is not prepared to steer well clear of its community spaces. Imagine a high school boys’ locker room come to life on Discord and GitHub and you’ll get an idea of what it’s like.
I empathise with Vaxry. I remember being young, smart, productive… and mean. I did some cool stuff, but I deeply regret the way I treated people. It wasn’t really my fault – I was a product of my environment – but it was my responsibility. Today, I’m proud to have built many welcoming communities, where people are rewarded for their involvement, rather than coming away from their experience hurt. What motivates us to build and give away free software if not bringing joy to ourselves and others? Can we be proud of a community which brings more suffering into the world?
All this over some discord server drama. I cant blame the dev for wanting to code and not waste his time moderating.
Then don’t run a discord instance?
“Hey, the server is getting pretty toxic and I can’t be bothered moderating it - this is no longer an official communication channel, I’m not going to be hanging out here anymore, if you need help ask in the GitHub discussion forum”
That douchebag can’t even moderate himself. I wasn’t considering trying out hyprland, but after this I wouldn’t feel safe running his code on any of my computers. I can imagine that it would do some “prank” if it found out that I’m thinking differently
It’s the developer’s responsibility to moderate the discord server properly.
It’s the moderation staff’s responsibility. Sorry for nitpicking, I understand in this case it’s likely the same people.
I just get triggered when I hear that an open source software developer should have any responsibilities at all (maybe apart from some extreme examples), and I wouldn’t like this idea to stick in anyone’s head.
He doesn’t have the responsibility to open a discord server for his project, absolutely agree.
But if you open a server, you do in fact have to moderate it.
I agree, open source devs don’t owe anyone anything (unless they’re accepting commissions or something). Also, generally speaking, being a good developer does not translate to being a good community moderator. There should be no expectation of the latter.
The developer owes you nothing.
The developer doesn’t owe us anything, but if they’re creating an online community like Discord there are inherent responsibilities that come with that. If they don’t want to moderate, then they shouldn’t create a Discord/Matrix/Whatever server.
Just like how even if the developer doesn’t owe us anything, that doesn’t mean it’s fine for them to push malware as an update to their previously fine code after they’ve established trust.
“server”
That’s what they’re called over there, yes.