> I like dwm, and dwm being pro-fascist would be disappointing to me.
How is dwm, a piece of software, part of a political ideology? If the program and its source code promoted a specific belief, that would be one thing. But I haven't seen that in any of the suckless tools I use.
My comments weren't meant to trivialize anything the authors may or may not believe. I'm just saying that I personally don't care what that is, even if I may disagree with it. The software they produce is not in any way tainted by this.
Right, but ReiserFS was only officially deprecated in 2022, and removed from the kernel in 2024. The conviction happened in 2008.
I don't think this counts as "cancellation". Interest in the filesystem waned over the years, in part surely due to the criminal case. But it was also technically superseded by other filesystems, so there wasn't any reason for keeping it. There was some chatter about Reiser4/5 a few years ago, and someone somewhere is probably still running and maintaining it outside of the kernel.
As awful as that case was, I think it speaks to the possibility of separating art from artist. There's no reason that awful human beings, by whatever criteria we decide to label them as such, can't produce things that have artistic or technical merit. At the end of the day, we're all flawed in different ways. Chances are that many of the authors, artists, and celebrities we hold in high regard have thought or done things we wouldn't agree with, yet we never hear about it. Dismissing someone's entire existence because they've done something objectionable, or in this day and age simply said or implied something objectionable, is wrong IMO. Outrage travels like wildfire online, and can often be sparked by a misunderstanding, which is then amplified in various echo chambers.
I'm not saying that wrong behavior should be swept under the rug. People should be held accountable for their words and actions. But at the same time, let's not crucify people because of some collective moral outrage against them. Context and nuance matter. The world would be a better place if we knew how to talk to each other despite of our differences.
This is the "separate the art from the artist" mentality and some people can't do it as art is expression and see the art as supporting the views of the artist. You might think it is a stretch to apply this to a window manager but I see where people are coming from.
I don't know, the problem with that mentality is that you can't just separate the art from the artist, right? unless we're talking about historical figures, on some level it's validating and enabling those people and their ideology, even if you explicitly disagree with it.
I'm pretty bummed out to hear about all of this. I thought the suckless style software was pretty cool, easy to grok, minimalist. I use a lot of it. Granted, I've been planning on translating all of the minimalist C software I've been using to R7RS scheme, so maybe this just gives me more motivation to get started on porting my stack to that.
Someone in an earlier thread said something like, if he avoided software written by assholes then he would have a hard time using his computer, something like that. I think that's kind of true, but there are definitely red lines when it comes to violent ideologies.
That's why I said it'd be "disappointing". I wouldn't be happy about it. But I'm not sure I'd stop using it. After all, I'm not sure how it can itself be "pro-fascist". (If anything I'd suspect Wayland compositors of said allegiances more. /s)
At risk of putting myself out there, it shows how crazy things have gotten when neo-nazi sympathies are described as "just some political beliefs".