Disappointing and unsurprising. He and Bryan are very similar, complaining that “social justice warriors” are “ruining open source” whenever they see pushback against shitty actions, then getting right back to doing way worse.

Whenever I post such things, I get a small wave of displeased people. Rarely get thanks, though. Even if it takes a bit of effort, and I inevitably find yet more stuff. That’s ok, praise obviously isn’t the point.

But it demoralized me a little, how there’s always downplaying. It’s never enough. I can say Brendan Eich is homophobic, ideally you shouldn’t support him, and someone will tell me he invented javascript, and that makes it ok (my entire point is thus null, I am overreacting).

Your thanks encourage me to uselessly annoy and present no arguments a bit longer. Thank you.

Downvoted for stating a relevant, verifiable fact. Incredible.

we’ve created the Ladybird Browser Initiative , a US 501©(3)

The inaugural board of directors:

• Andreas Kling (President)

I’m a bit hesitant to comment further because this thread is already quite long, but assuming it’s a genuine question I can send a DM and we can talk there, if you want?

No need to apologize, I’ll take a late reply over nothing any day. I’m not the fastest replier, myself. That said, I’m sorry, but isn’t that the guy that calls everyone stupid, delusional, and entitled when people (often) point out his mistakes?

I honestly appreciate the comment from a Firefox dev, believing in good faith that it’s truthful—such insights are often hidden, strewn over comments, old IRC messages, etc.—but I’m definitely wary of taking anything that creator says at face-value. Tech-influencers may have been a mistake.

…Well, I’ll give it a shot anyway, since you say there’s value in it. Thank you.

Seeing that you replied to a comment that’s almost a week old, I wouldn’t be surprised if you do.

I really hope no one reading thinks this redditor behavior is as cool as the author does. Dude seemingly can’t get the point they’re arguing against, so this is all that’s left, I guess.

Yeah buddy, this is to sleep better at night. You’ve shown you’re not stopping the high-school tier debate club logic and the goofy-ass mic-drops.

Sure, ignore him being pals with the homophobe CEO and welcoming Mr. genocide because he made cool tech. Because being a developer puts you above mere ethical issues, and saying “I’m apolitical” makes you immune to criticism.

And lets ignore that it’s been changed since. People ‘never’ change, so lets fuck up their entire career and public image for life.

Andreas hasn’t changed, that’s half the point of my comment. The PR was sent by someone else, merged by someone else, disguised with a different title, and all after his departure announcement. Someone approached him about it later, and Andreas himself admits he hasn’t changed his mind. Did you read nothing? Where’s this change you’re so confident about?

And I’m not ruining his career, that’s absurd. I couldn’t manage, even if I wanted to. Look at the niche forum we’re in. Even so, I’ve defended his work, his skill, the very idea of Ladybird, the need for more browser engines, even the tooling. But unless people shut up and never criticize him, it’s just not enough for you.

If you think that comment outweighs all the positive impacts Andreas is making, that’s your prerogative. I’m not interested in holding everyone up to such high expectations.

“Don’t unnecessarily chum up to homophobes and genocide defenders” aren’t high expectations. They’re ridiculously low-hanging fruit, considering our history. Absolutely pathetic excusing of his actions.

It’s a little complicated, but it doesn’t look good. If you’re interested, I wrote a comment about it.

A single line of documentation? How about looking into some context? Hurt feelings my ass, Andreas isn’t some innocent, silly little guy who never does anything questionable.

And which cause exactly are you talking about? Because I don’t know about you, but I’ll stand for real, marginalized people over lines of code on a screen any day.

What’s surprising is his complete lack of care that Eich is probably still against gay marriage.

It’s not just a few interactions, it’s Andreas’ entire attitude around these topics. You absolutely can judge people and guess their beliefs from their online actions. Connect the dots, why don’t you?

I’m not “separating the art from the artist” when the artist is alive and frolicking with a homophobe. That’s very much relevant to me, I see LGBT folks being harmed every day due to such indifference.

Maybe I’m the odd one out, and do tell me if you think that’s the case, but when I can, I don’t support homophobes with my wallet nor my words.

It’s like voting with your wallet, but for free. Image is a tool, just like capital, and I feel that contributing to theirs is a form of (albeit minor) support. Maybe I should’ve used supporting, or another word. Point is, Andreas does that, and I think it’s because he likes Brendan. Thinks he’s great, shouldn’t have joined the people decrying him for being a homophobe.

People who care about LGBT folks don’t usually like homophobes, and aren’t usually against decrying them. I don’t think this is a good sign for Andreas. That’s the kind of thing that you need to keep in mind when you see that first PR.

Are you trying to convince me that making a neutral meme about a shitty person’s success is equatable to supporting/being a nazi?

No, I tried to make that clear. I actually don’t get how you read it that way. Also, the meme isn’t neutral when you consider how he views Eich, just like it isn’t originally neutral towards Gaben and Steam when gamers use it.

Dream, sorry if managed to bungle up and completely misinterpret that point. I feel like I was answering with something important to note, but can’t even tell anymore. I’m physically tired, so maybe I should’ve returned later. In any case, I hope this won’t bother you for long.

I honestly can’t tell if there’s a disguise. Maybe there isn’t! He seems to genuinely and stubbornly believe in the apolitical-centrist stuff, which you wouldn’t think him capable of since he’s so intelligent when it comes to programming… but programming intelligence is not necessarily applicable anywhere else.

You’re defending him—intentionally or not—because you’re giving legitimacy to the idea that, somehow, the party that kicked him out is in the wrong, not the guy that defends genocide. It’s likely there would be complaints regardless of their official reasoning, because Vaxry’s problem is beyond reason.

I feel it all comes to the same unhinged idea that because someone is a bad person, everything they touch, create or any person engaging with them is also a bad person.

Not at all? There’s a chance I edited my comment after you replied. I’ve made many edits, and I’m not exactly keeping track. Please reread the end of it:

For all its issues, I do hope Ladybird succeeds as a new browser engine because the internet needs more of those. But I’m not touching or otherwise supporting it unless they get their shit sorted.

I hope the project succeeds, that it helps the internet. Doesn’t mean I must like or support the person behind it, specially when they’re acting this way. I believe there are others like me. I would like them to be informed as well.

The idea that I am not allowed to praise Brave browser features because of something unrelated its founder did is ridiculous.

Good news: I never said that. Go on, praise Ladybird. Someone asked about details on “Andreas’ gender issue,” I replied with details. Because I’m tired of people defending it in isolation, I brought more details. Any criticism is of Andreas actions, based on Andreas’ own actions.

I refuse to believe a reasonable, healthy mind sees someone cheering for queerphobes and thinks there’s nothing wrong with that. “He’s just interacting, he doesn’t do the bad things” has to be the most insane or trollish response to this, because it shows you don’t understand or outright don’t care about how this harms people.

By that absurd logic, if I like interacting with Nazis on the daily it’s fine, so long as I don’t actually pull the trigger on the jews myself. When people call me out, I’ll just say I’m apolitical. That’s how Andreas describes himself, by the way. Apolitical.

I’m not calling Andreas an outright Nazi, to be extra clear. If I had to take a guess, I’d say he’s a right leaning “thinks he’s a centrist and apolitical” person who doesn’t see the harm in many of the things he supports or is otherwise sheltered from them. This seems to be a trend among self-described centrists.

I’m baffled by your comment.

Read again, it’s not just interacting, he’s praising, promoting, and gladly and voluntarily engaging with these people. Not “the wrong people.” Say it with me: far-right misinformation propagandists, queerphobes, a genocide defender. Not “wrong”, with scare quotes, but actually shitty people. And I’m not even done with that comment.

About your ridiculous defense of vaxry, I’m going to be straight with you: violating CoC or not is irrelevant. If you manage a community that toxic, don’t see anything wrong with it, and don’t want to do anything about it, it is normal to want nothing to do with you. No magical binding social contract is necessary for this—if you suck, people don’t want to deal with you.

Collaborating in FDO isn’t a natural right, it’s a privilege earned by contributing. Vaxry made people not want to be there. Vaxry was detracting.

Your entire reply reeks of “it’s not that bad,” which to me reads as “I don’t think those things are bad” and sincerely makes me not want to talk with you further if that’s truly the case.

EDIT: So, I checked your profile, and you have a giant comment thread on things you dislike about DEI, and you also do mental gymnastics to defend the right. Cool, cool. And a comment equivalating “what if kamala did the sieg hail” to the question “what if elon did it?”

Thats part of why I try really hard not to let perfect be the enemy of good.

That’s fair, I hope I didn’t come across as attacking usage of “imperfect” solutions. It’s definitely not my goal, I’m in the “try to use the least bad thing” camp.

Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge and engage with that context. I spend too much time on the internet and fully understand it’s unsustainable for most—it’s not doing me good, either—so I’m glad I get to share relevant content I’ve accumulated from time to time.

I’ll give my take on it. Something many fail to grasp is that it’s not about a singular thing, you need to look at the context. Let’s go through some of it:

• Andreas Kling, lead developer of (now-)Ladybird, rejects PR that changes “he” to “they” in documentation.
  • This is the most frequently mentioned example of Andreas’ issues.
  • The “he” in question referred to any user, where “they” is already commonly used instead by everything from companies, to news, to the Linux Kernel docs (an arguably much more important software project).
  • Andreas’ exact words: “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
  • This code was eventually merged 3 years laters in a different PR, this time described as “Grammar fixes” (it changes even more pronouns to gender neutral than the original did).
    • This PR was merged two hours after its creation and, coincidentally, around a month after Andreas announced his stepping down from the project.
    • An unrelated post by the contributor, same day.
  • Someone got his attention and tried to explain to him why that’s not cool; he doubled down, assuming the worst from the original contributor.
• Andreas Kling likes interacting with far-right, queerphobic, or otherwise controversial persons.
  • Here’s him calling Brendan Eich, known homophobe, kicked out of Mozilla for… being a homophobe, now CEO of the foremost crypto browser, infamous for its bravery and attracting like-minded fans, “Senpai.”
    • A far more impressive man than Andreas will ever be.
    • Brendan’s great …Also shouldn’t have decried him in the past for being a homophobe (he did to fit in).
    • Memeing about Brendan Eich’s secret to success.
  • Here’s him welcoming Vaxry, infamous for the toxic community of his hyprland project to the point of being kicked out of the freedesktop.org project. He’s also on record saying “I do believe there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide”. There is a print of this, somewhere. I will find it and put it here.
  • Here’s him doing a talk with Bryan Lunduke, tech’s premier transphobe anti-DEI, anti-Woke conspiracy theorist with a classic far-right victim-complex.
    • Trudging through Bryan’s slop wears on the mind, but here’s another example of him being ridiculous. Highlight of the article: “There are multiple Software and Computer organizations which have declared their support for the Trans fetish over the last few years…”
      • Read anything by Bryan, then look into what he’s talking about. There are at least as many examples, as there are times Bryan has touched upon LGBT topics or linux in recent years.
    • Here’s relatively prominent KDE developer Niccolò’s hour long video detailing how Bryan is a horrible, lying “journalist,” and how people need to stop giving him a stage.
  • He also often interacts with other various degrees of right-leaning users on twitter, a platform he describes as full of positive energy, unlike Mastodon.
    • For fun, I would like to share with you, dear reader, my favorite comic about the state of twitter.
• Other quirky things about Andreas that could be irrelevant in isolation but… please, put the pieces together. I’m begging you, look at the full picture. Is there truly nothing off about all of this?
  • Thinks the left doesn’t contribute to Open Source, and the right does all the work.
    • Hey, remember that time Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, called himself a “woke communist” on a public rant on the fediverse? He must be having an identity crisis now, huh.
  • Self-described centrist and apolitical.
    • I can elaborate on why this isn’t good if needed, but I think most people get it.
  • Wary of people publicizing likes.
    • Someone once implied that if people didn’t like Andreas’ views now, they would’ve abhorred his Liked list before twitter privated those. It’s a random person’s word, so don’t take it as fact, but I need to share this because I’ve seen similar situations before, and it fits the pattern.

Would I look at that PR and say I’m not touching Andreas with a ten-foot pole? Maybe that’s excessive. Would I ignore all the rest and say he’s just misunderstood? Hell no. For all its issues, I do hope Ladybird succeeds as a new browser engine because the internet needs more of those. But I cannot support it until Andreas gets his shit sorted.

P.P.S. I’m tired of this.

I get that, I was excited for Brave as an independent search engine before learning more about them. Kagi genuinely seems to be a good meta search engine, but its leadership is ignorant, reckless, and frankly embarrassing. I won’t comment on Searx since I haven’t tried or read about it in a long time. Bit bleak, eh?

That second point sounds interesting, do you remember any names or other sources I could look into?