Mastodawn

I keep seeing this sentiment that desktop Linux has become woke and gay.

Desktop Linux has been woke and gay the whole time. Y’all just for some reason decided you suddenly have a problem with it. We didn’t change, you did. Okay some of us came out of the closet. But we’ve been talking about diversity and inclusion for decades and equity has been the entire focal point of the free software movement since like the 70s! It’s woke gay anarcho-communism and you fucking loved it until 2016

@danirabbit they just think now they rip the masks off and go brownshirt.

But this ain't 1933's Germany!

@kkarhan it is now that tangerine hitler is back in office

@jakeyounglol and he has no reason to follow #DueProcess or the #RuleOfLaw because eitger he becomes a #Franco-Style #dictator or ends up impoverished and in dying in jail.

@kkarhan yeah, i hope he gets tried in the second nuremberg trials, unlike the original hitler who escaped to go directly to hell (if it exists)

Stefanie Janine Stölting Jul 16

@jakeyounglol @kkarhan Mussolini ended with shots in the back and presented in Milano hanging from the roof of a gas station, head down, feet up.
Just saying.

@sjstoelting @jakeyounglol you forgot the "dragged through the streets and have his face curbstomped"

@kkarhan @danirabbit Everyone knows it's 1984.

Faith, purple-haired feminist

@danirabbit Some of it's even trans and bisexual!

@faithisleaping @danirabbit /some/ of it??

Faith, purple-haired feminist

@eleanor @danirabbit There are straight people who work on the Linux desktop. I know a few. Tragic, I know, but true.

Faith, purple-haired feminist

@eleanor @danirabbit Actually, the majority of them are cis and straight. There's just also a lot of LGBTQ folks and most of the cis/hets aren't assholes, at least about gender and sexuality.

@faithisleaping @danirabbit yeah, I know. I made a bad joke and immediately felt guilty for it.

Faith, purple-haired feminist

@eleanor @danirabbit That's okay. I found it funny.

Madagascar_Sky Jul 16

@faithisleaping @eleanor @danirabbit

What's that joke about CS degrees and thigh high socks?

Janek @ IndieDev.site Jul 16

@eleanor @faithisleaping @danirabbit it was a good joke!

Aaron Honeycutt | 🐧🚀🛰️Jul 16

@faithisleaping @eleanor @danirabbit

GabeMoralesVR Jul 16

@faithisleaping @eleanor @danirabbit The PC Users Club that I got into linux with in 1999 had a C++ class they taught on Saturdays. I was 15, and went to learn. They had a donation box, where if you had books or software you weren't using, you could give them to someone who needed them. At end of meeting, I asked for C++ book. Guy asked why i was there, said I wanted to learn to make games. Class laughed at me, refused me the book. Bunch of 40+ year old laughing at a kid, saying I'd give up.

GabeMoralesVR Jul 16

@faithisleaping @eleanor @danirabbit Dude who wasn't laughing met me outside in the hall after the meeting. He worked at NASA, and was a giant nerd who was also into games. He was building his own CPU from scratch, working in x86 asm, doing OpenGL, and remaking Ultima. He ran Redhat. He said it was fucked up how they laughed and offered to tutor me on weekends. I learned SO MUCH from him, foundational knowledge. HE is my model for Linux enthusiast: helpful, and not an asshole by design.

Faith, purple-haired feminist

@GabeMoralesVR Yeah, assholes abound, unfortunately. But they're not all there is and they're not even the majority in a lot of areas. They're just really loud and make messes the rest of us have to clean up.

I'm glad you had that guy in your life. It's amazing how much good one mentor or teacher can do. 💜

@eleanor @danirabbit

@faithisleaping we love our allies

❤️

@eleanor @danirabbit

I saw an article that argued it's both, there's a left wing anti-capitalist camp that organized under "free software" and there's a right wing/libertarian camp that organized under open source.

And somehow the two factions managed to cooperate for a while under the banner of FOSS.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/12/the_price_of_software_freedom/

As an example I thought tt-rss was pretty functional, but after I saw their demo instance was full of stuff like the drudge report, I couldn't stand to use it.

The price of software freedom is eternal politics

Comment: Many don't realize or forget, but the FOSS world has ideological wings, too

The Register

Cassandrich Jul 16

@alienghic @danirabbit It's kinda more complicated than that. A lot of the "Free Software" crowd were also libertarian cranks (some of them even being into the top priority libertarian issue, age of consent 🤢) and some of the "Open Source" crowd were lost souls looking for acceptance in mainstream power structures. The split was more anti-corporate/corporate than left/right.

@dalias @danirabbit

That's a reasonable way to look at the divisions too.

And yeah there's far too many sexual abusers covering many different ideologies.

@dalias @alienghic @danirabbit RMS and ESR are both rather vile.

Danielle Foré Jul 16

@alienghic Most of the people that actually make the software are anarcho-communists or at least have some kind of feelings about the commons and capitalism and then a sizeable portion of fanatical users are libertarian dickwads. You can have an okay time pretending you’re rugged and independent as a user but you won’t get very far making anything worthwhile based on right wing politics *cough* xlibre *cough* suckless

I'm pretty sure anyone using a GPL like license wants there to be a shared commons.

I'm less sure about the MIT/BSD types though.

Faith Ekstrand Jul 17

@alienghic @danirabbit I'd argue MIT/BSD folks care more about shared commons than GPL folks do. GPL is the liberal "let's make some rules and all play by them" license. MIT/BSD is the anarchist "I'm going to do what I do for the good of the world and not try to control other people" license.

@gfxstrand @alienghic @danirabbit I used to in that anarchist camp as well but nowadays MIT/BSD gives strong modern capitalist shill vibes for me. Which is a pity as I do like that idea behind it. OTOH things like unlicense capture that feel better for me nowadays.

Andrew C. Dingman Jul 16

@danirabbit @alienghic Compared to the rest of society, open source communities have always seemed to me to be more accepting of all sorts of harmless deviation from "normal". But, we've always had our Eric Raymond's -- though I could swear he used to be less overtly crazy. And the Free Software community has had our share of "Oh shit. He's been doing WHAT to the women who show up?" moments.

Magnus Ahltorp Jul 16

@acdingman @danirabbit @alienghic For me personally, ESR seemed non-crazy for about five minutes. Of course it depended a lot on where one got one’s information from. Being quite deep into the community at the time, I heard a lot.

And RMS was known to be horrible to a lot of people, and even if most of the stories seemed to attribute it to aloofness, the sentiment was “don’t go near him”.

Now I’m not deep into the community at all, which unfortunately makes me unaware of many transgressions.

Andrew C. Dingman Jul 16

@ahltorp @danirabbit @alienghic I've never had direct interaction with either of those two. But what I've heard about RMS sounds like he's unpleasant to be around for everyone in a pretty equal-opportunity kind of way. IE, you probably won't enjoy the experience but it has nothing to do with your race, sex, sexually, gender presentation, etc.

Andrew C. Dingman Jul 16

@ahltorp @danirabbit @alienghic ESR has always had some odd libertarian views, but 25-30 years ago I understood them to be more along the lines of caring too much about guns and having an oddly narrow idea of liberty, rather than bigotry against any particular group of humans. Then the next time I noticed him he was publicly affiliating with RWNJs and my friends were disappointed in him for a lot more than just downplaying the importance of the four freedoms.

benrutter Jul 16

@danirabbit @alienghic wait, what's the deal with suckless and right wing-ness? I have to admit I like the ideas behing suckless up until the point I actually use the software.

Danielle Foré Jul 16

https://tilde.team/~ben/suckmore/

suckmore

Dźwiedziu Jul 16

@danirabbit
Wow, this sucks…

And I'm not even trying to pass it as a pun…

@benrutter @alienghic

benrutter Jul 16

@danirabbit @alienghic gross! Thanks for sharing - the developers attempt to argue they aren't exclusionary comes as the kind of dog-whistle nonsense I've heard way too many times before:

> We do not believe in equal status (i.e. e.g. forcibly obtaining a 50/50 gender ratio), as this immediately leads to discrimination.

(Lobsters post from FRIGN)

Máňa Zalabák Jul 16

@danirabbit @benrutter @alienghic wow, always considered "suckless" being the most suckful of all of FOSS, turns out they suck even more

Papaexmatrikulatus Jul 16

@danirabbit @alienghic
Hey Danielle, thanks for being so outspoken about your political position. Especially as it is anarchist. 🏴

Btw, it is a real shame that right-wingers are holding the title 'libertarian' hostage. It doesn't make any sense to say you are libertarian, if you support capitalism. Capitalism is a hierarchical system and therefore isn't inclined to freedom by design. But who am i telling this...

@alienghic @danirabbit

reads article
follows link about wayback logo
sees familiar pfplo and behold, fediling was behind the logo thingy

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jul 16

@alienghic @danirabbit I find this stance _odd_ to be put it mildly. It dehumanizes the political motivations of the contributors and only shows a shallow understanding of economics.

Like nothing in the GPL or MIT or whatever is inherently left or right wing, you can easily argue it the other way around. GPL is libertarian, because it allows _me_ to do whatever the fuck I want with the stuff I bought 🙃.

The politics were introduced by the people, not by the license.

@alienghic I looked into the tt-rss demo page (https://demo.tt-rss.org/). Everyone can add feeds to it and I would assume that it periodically gets reset. Or maybe these feeds were deleted?

Tiny Tiny RSS : Login

official_verified

Xenofact (he/him)

@danirabbit I want it GAYER and WOKER.

Madagascar_Sky Jul 16

@RevXenoFact @danirabbit

I can just imagine Linus Trovalds in a thong at the beach. 😻

Xenofact (he/him)

@Madagascar_Sky @danirabbit Linux is all about getting those packages right.

Madagascar_Sky Jul 16

@RevXenoFact @danirabbit

Getting the Packages right and TIGHT!

Xenofact (he/him)

@Madagascar_Sky @danirabbit load 'em up!

GabeMoralesVR Jul 16

@RevXenoFact @danirabbit It used to be Linuo and Linua but they said fuck that and now it's Linux

haaflife Jul 16

@GabeMoralesVR @RevXenoFact @danirabbit underrated toot

Lisa Melton Jul 16

@danirabbit This. 💯

Louise Auerhahn 🏳️‍🌈Jul 16

@danirabbit I've never used Linux but maybe I should give it a try 🌈

Krutonium://Jul 16

@lauerhahn @danirabbit Give it a shot! Ask around in your friend group and see if anyone already is, and would be willing to help you get comfortable! :)

Nora, purple afficionado Jul 16

@danirabbit Computing has been queer since computers were invented. Just ask Alan Turing.

GabeMoralesVR Jul 16

@bumpus @danirabbit holy shit I'd never read about this before, just looked it up and OMFG that's awful. He was robbed, and in reporting the robbery, he got sentenced to chemical castration for being homosexual in 1953?? One of the brightest minds in comp sci history?? Fuck this world, we're an awful species.

@bumpus @danirabbit and Sophie Wilson and Lynn Conway

Hal Pomeranz Jul 16

@eleanor @bumpus @danirabbit And from BSD land Kirk McKusick, Eric Allman, Rob Kolstad just to name a few. The USENIX/SAGE community had outsized queer representation, including in leadership roles. That was a wonderful accomplishment in the Regan era.

Hal Pomeranz Jul 16

@eleanor @bumpus @danirabbit

Sadly, we as a community have some major issues.

One is ableism. There is a community of people who would desperately love to join the party but are being locked out by lousy accessibility support and a “fix it yourself and submit a PR” attitude—PRs that when submitted don’t get merged. The community managers need to listen to these people because there is massive potential to be unlocked there.

And then there’s the whole toxic masculinity problem, masquerading as “meritocracy”. Shouting people down is not meritocracy, it’s abuse. So many good developers have been driven away because they don’t want to hang around with people making drama and throwing mud on each other.

Plus the usual racism and sexism that seem to exist in every branch of STEM.

I love Unix and Linux and have based my entire career on it. But I recognize the dark patterns that keep us from being a truly inclusive community.

GabeMoralesVR Jul 16

@danirabbit I hear this whole "open source" bidness is just a load of SOCIALISM, glorious glorious socialism!

DD ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔσ🌱Jul 16

@danirabbit fuck yeah! Be gay, do crimes!

Falling forward 🍉Jul 16

@danirabbit
> I keep seeing this sentiment that desktop Linux has become woke and gay.

Where? Sounds like you are not hanging out in nice places 🤔