[discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult]

Hello everybody,


this morning, Redhat employees banned me from the freedesktop.org gitlab
infrastructure - so censored all my work (not just on Xorg). They killed
my account, my git repos, my tickets in Xorg and closed all my merge
requests. And then making fun on social media about it.

They fired the shot that's heared around the world.

So much for freedesktop.org being "independent" and embracing freedom. 
Perhaps we should nominate them for the next Orwell award.

It's now clear that freedesktop.org *is* the Redskirts, and they want
to kill X. By the way, the same corporation that tied to proprietarize a
lot of FOSS code, including the Linux kernel (and I've been one of those 
who warned them about terminating our license grants them).

My most evil heresies probably were:

a) forking Xorg and making *actual progress*
b) talking to a journalist whose name must not be spoken in many other
    Redhat/IBM tax evasion outlets, like GNOME (they're also banning
    honorable long time contributors for just mentioning that name)
c) inviting *anybody* to join me, without discrimination

I don't know why, but it really looks they're quite scared by one guy
that's just trying to actually bring X11 forward. Hard to find he right
words for telling how honored I'm about that.

This didn't actually surprise me, I knew this would be coming for about
a year now. Just didn't expect them to do such an extremely irrational
and dumb move. Now I'm taking great pleasure seeing the Streisand effect
kicking in (my inbox is exploding). Thanks for that great publicity.

It's not the first time this happens in FOSS world, and it's not the
first time it's happening in X: remember what Xfree86 board did to
the honorable Keith Packard, back about two decades ago - what lead to
the birth of Xorg and the death of Xfree86. Same is happening again.

History repeats itself.

And now the Redskirts placed me onto the same stage as the great
honorable Keith Packard. WOOOOW.

Just to be clear, I didn't want to fork, I tried my best to work
together with the Xorg team. But I knew for long time, this day would
come. Xorg has been captured by Redhat, in order to get rid of destroy
competition. The necessary consequence is a fork, more competition.

For those interested in bringing X forward, feel free to join the
mailing list:

https://www.freelists.org/list/xlibre

Git repo:
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver.git

I'm expecting to be banned from whole freedesktop.org mail system, too.
Excommunication unfortunately had become a common thing in the so-called
"free software" world - GNOME is just one of many examples. So if you
don't hear anymore from me on freedesktop.org lists, you know what's
going on.

Join the xlibre mailing list to stay tuned.

Together, we'll make X great again.


have fun,
--mtx

-- 
---
Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
info@metux.net -- +49-151-27565287


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Re: [discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[Gary]

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I’m fsiling to understand how this is related to illumos… Are any of the
illumos devs contributing upstream to Xlibre? If so, isn’t there a separate
dev list?

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Re: [discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[bronkoo via illumos-discuss]

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Gary, it is all about our freedom of speech... it should be related to everyone,  everywhere!

+1 Enrico
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Re: [discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[Sad Clouds]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 15:50:32 +0200
"Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <info@metux.net> wrote:

> Together, we'll make X great again.

I think X11 has had its days back in the 90s. Not sure it is worth the
effort trying to make it great. You may as well start with a new
design and create something new. My biggest gripe with X11 and the GUI
frameworks that sit on top are: the bloat, bad UI design and
inconsistent look and feel across different applications. It is one big
mess.

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Re: [discuss] History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days

[Till Wegmüller]

Hi Enrico

Thanks for the Heads up. I assume the Xorg Testing suite will be under 
XLibre organisation aswell? Will it require XLibre for testing in the 
Future or can we still use it with upstream(non fork) Xorg to test updates?

Please keep us posted on the XLibre progress and how and What you are 
improving. One thing I see with the Nvidia Drivers seems to be a bit of 
a stopper for us since we are currently lacking AMDGPU support and more 
modern Intel kernel drivers. I'll keep an eye on the project.

For those wondering what Enrico did in the past, he added illumos 
support to his X.org testing framework.

Greetings
Till

On 06.06.25 15:50, Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> 
> this morning, Redhat employees banned me from the freedesktop.org gitlab
> infrastructure - so censored all my work (not just on Xorg). They killed
> my account, my git repos, my tickets in Xorg and closed all my merge
> requests. And then making fun on social media about it.
> 
> They fired the shot that's heared around the world.
> 
> So much for freedesktop.org being "independent" and embracing freedom. 
> Perhaps we should nominate them for the next Orwell award.
> 
> It's now clear that freedesktop.org *is* the Redskirts, and they want
> to kill X. By the way, the same corporation that tied to proprietarize a
> lot of FOSS code, including the Linux kernel (and I've been one of those 
> who warned them about terminating our license grants them).
> 
> My most evil heresies probably were:
> 
> a) forking Xorg and making *actual progress*
> b) talking to a journalist whose name must not be spoken in many other
>     Redhat/IBM tax evasion outlets, like GNOME (they're also banning
>     honorable long time contributors for just mentioning that name)
> c) inviting *anybody* to join me, without discrimination
> 
> I don't know why, but it really looks they're quite scared by one guy
> that's just trying to actually bring X11 forward. Hard to find he right
> words for telling how honored I'm about that.
> 
> This didn't actually surprise me, I knew this would be coming for about
> a year now. Just didn't expect them to do such an extremely irrational
> and dumb move. Now I'm taking great pleasure seeing the Streisand effect
> kicking in (my inbox is exploding). Thanks for that great publicity.
> 
> It's not the first time this happens in FOSS world, and it's not the
> first time it's happening in X: remember what Xfree86 board did to
> the honorable Keith Packard, back about two decades ago - what lead to
> the birth of Xorg and the death of Xfree86. Same is happening again.
> 
> History repeats itself.
> 
> And now the Redskirts placed me onto the same stage as the great
> honorable Keith Packard. WOOOOW.
> 
> Just to be clear, I didn't want to fork, I tried my best to work
> together with the Xorg team. But I knew for long time, this day would
> come. Xorg has been captured by Redhat, in order to get rid of destroy
> competition. The necessary consequence is a fork, more competition.
> 
> For those interested in bringing X forward, feel free to join the
> mailing list:
> 
> https://www.freelists.org/list/xlibre
> 
> Git repo:
> https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver.git
> 
> I'm expecting to be banned from whole freedesktop.org mail system, too.
> Excommunication unfortunately had become a common thing in the so-called
> "free software" world - GNOME is just one of many examples. So if you
> don't hear anymore from me on freedesktop.org lists, you know what's
> going on.
> 
> Join the xlibre mailing list to stay tuned.
> 
> Together, we'll make X great again.
> 
> 
> have fun,
> --mtx
> 

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