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?

Update: Response from Vaxry, Hyprland Developer

  • lckdscl [they/them]
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    112 years ago

    CW: slurs, bigotry

    Well this was apparently their chat log. I found the link through the comments on Hacker News. Whatever you think of Drew, he’s not wrong at all, they sound like they just discovered 4chan.

  • RaivoKulli
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    282 years ago

    It wasn’t really my fault – I was a product of my environment

    Riiight.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      Yeah, I’m not too fond of that statement. I respect ddevault, particularly since I have seen his serious growth into a mature, empathetic person. So ICM surprised that this made it into the post.

    • @[email protected]
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      202 years ago

      The very next words are “but it was my responsibility”… what exactly is bad about that statement if you don’t intentionally cherry pick a bad quote?

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      You kinda left out the next line in which he says

      But it was my responsibility

      That’s the whole statement and tbh I agree. It’s never anyone’s fault for being a bad person, but it is 100% their responsibility to right their wrongs.

  • @[email protected]
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    1222 years ago

    [A trans person] joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns […] because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them because people were referring to them as “he” [misgendering them], which, on the Internet, let’s be real, is the default.

    Damn I didn’t know women didn’t exist on the internet! Also “making a big deal out of ones pronouns” is almost never the case, it’s always just a normal request for the respect of addressing someone properly.

    • KSP Atlas
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      112 years ago

      Does drew not know about the existence of singular they? I use that unless i know their gender properly

      • @[email protected]
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        382 years ago

        These are not Drew’s words, he is quoting something said by the project dev. The context that the previous commenter ommitted is:

        Following my email conversation with Vaxry, he appeared on a podcast to discuss toxicity in the Hyprland community. This quote from the interview clearly illustrates the attitude of the leadership:

        [A trans person] joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns […] because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them because people were referring to them as “he” [misgendering them], which, on the Internet, let’s be real, is the default. And so, one of the moderators changed the pronouns in their nickname to “who/cares”. […] Let’s be real, this isn’t like, calling someone the N-word or something.

    • _cnt0
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      2 years ago

      […] the lead dev seems to be a fucking idiot.

      How so? I mean, I am tempted to agree. Reaching out to that unofficial community to improve their conduct instead of just ignoring them is pretty idiotic. But, are you sure you’ve read the linked page and understood its content?

      I didn’t pay attention when reading the linked page. Its author is/was the creator of wlroots, not hyprland. He reached out to the lead dev of hyprland which is very much associated with the discord community. I got so much wrong reading that …

      Sorry for being contrarian.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Out of topic, but damn, this is what I like about Lemmy. Just people admitting their mistakes and people moving on without making a fuss. I missed this so much. Reddit is extremely toxic and is hard to see when you are inside

      • Aatube
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        192 years ago

        They mean the hyprland lead dev, not the dev in the article. In fact the lead dev brushed off the who/cares thing in a podcast and compared himself to Terry Davis.

        • _cnt0
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          52 years ago

          Looks like I didn’t understood what I read. I should have paid more attention.

        • just another dev
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          352 years ago

          To be fair, as a dev, I wouldn’t want to bother with that either, and much rather hand that stuff over to a moderator or a community manager. Then again, I’d also wouldn’t run a discord or a forum for those exact same reasons.

            • just another dev
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              2 years ago

              I’m not sure if I follow. Someone made or quoted a childish argument, and they just shrugged it off and ignored it. What’s wrong with that?

          • @[email protected]
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            122 years ago

            Dito. I would want to deal with technical problems, not social ones. If people start to fight over social norms in my technical community, I would advise them to take that elsewhere. (Of course same if people behave like assholes.)

            Then again I wouldn’t create a fucking discord “server” for a technical topic in the first place.

        • _cnt0
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          52 years ago

          I got a lot wrong initially reading that blog post (updated my comment accordingly). Though, I can sympathize with what he’s saying in that screenshot specifically. If I did maintain a popular open source project I’d rather completdly remove the social aspect than try and manage it.

  • @[email protected]
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    32 years ago

    I struggle to be interested in any bling project written by C++ “coders” since they were 9 who don’t even know how copyright works so use a pseudonym there instead - they’re almost always inexperienced children. And children are almost always sociopaths.

  • _cnt0
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    142 years ago

    Well, we live in a democracy: 9 out of 10 people enjoy bullying or don’t care about it. If you hate democracy, go to North Korea, snowflake!

    (obvious /s is obvious)

    In other non-news: Using a software doesn’t require visiting a loosely associated unofficial community. This has strong vibes of people wanting to be Christian and changing Christianity while being opposed to ~half the bible’s content if they bothered to read it. Just fuck that cesspool and move on with your life …

  • @[email protected]
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    852 years ago

    the moderators of the Discord server engaged in a harassment campaign against a transgender user, including using their moderator privileges to edit the pronouns in their username from “they/she” to “who/cares”

    Well, apparently those moderators care. Why else edit it?

    • RiikkaTheIcePrincess
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      382 years ago

      They like to make a show like everyone on Earth is just like they are so how dare we exist differently but it’s clearly just them being hateful. Idunno how bigots manage to still think they’re clever and totally not insecure whilst making self-contradictory statements and raging over nonsense and trivia for hours at a time, often in spaces where they’re not even welcome.

  • @[email protected]
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    202 years ago

    Well that’s pretty bad. I just switched to hyprland and like it, but I don’t want to give those people a bigger platform than what they already have… Ah shit I’ll have to think about that. Why can’t we have nice things that aren’t made by complete assholes.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      >let me and my cult report this server because a person didn’t use muh pronouns and hecking misgendered me

      Kill yourself

  • @[email protected]
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    22 years ago

    The guy who develops hyprland is a known transphobe, I’m surprised this is just now coming out.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      That usually isn’t a problem as long as they keep it to themselves and away from the community. There are many Foss developers who are like that - they don’t cause a controversy. This one seems to be different and openly toxic.

  • @[email protected]
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    152 years ago

    This is a good enough reason to fork a project and establish a new community with new norms.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Fork this project for what? For hecking misgendering your sisters? Go fuck off to your safespaces and stop bring your cancer to free software.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        Hyprland is itself a fork of wlroots, a project that the author of this post created, so this has happened before and they definitely have the skills to bootstrap a new project.

        • aard
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          92 years ago

          Hyprland is itself a fork of wlroots, a project that the author of this post created

          No, it is not. wlroots is plumbing containing parts a compositor commonly would need to implement, and many compositors - including hyprland - sit on top of that to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again.

        • @[email protected]
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          212 years ago

          It’s not a fork of wlroots. wlroots is a library to assist developers in creating Wayland compositors.

  • @[email protected]
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    652 years ago

    All this over some discord server drama. I cant blame the dev for wanting to code and not waste his time moderating.

    • china🇨🇳
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      302 years ago

      It’s the developer’s responsibility to moderate the discord server properly.

      • sado1
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        182 years ago

        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.

        • TehPers
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          52 years ago

          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.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 years ago

          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.

    • @[email protected]
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      512 years ago

      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”

    • @[email protected]
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      222 years ago

      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