Is he the one constantly spewing hateful shit in the Issues on GitHub whenever people ask him to not use only “he” and “him” in the docs?
That dev definitely doesn’t seem like the best human around, but this is all around terrible to me. Calling the project “dehumanizing” and “vile” because of this is ridiculous. Are people really willing to have their browsing tracked and sold rather than using a browser that has an assumed gender in the documentation? Not saying that they shouldn’t use gender neutral language, but as the original issue said, it’s a minor nitpick, let’s be honest. It’s also something that’s representative of one dev as a person, not of the project as a browser. Additionally, it could be something as simple as the dev coming from a gendered language, where the word “user” itself is masculine, and doesn’t see it the same way as English speakers asking for neutral language.
Constantly? Or once?
And was the “hateful shit” a single request to keep politics out of the project and stay technical?
And was the request to be more gender neutral granted?
I mean, I have not drilled into it. But I keep reading these complaints on Lemmy and the only link I have seen features a single response from him. It feels like a lot of manufactured controversy.
I’ve only tangentially picked up things about this but this is an example for it
(For some context, if you didn’t already know this, Ladybird originated from a SerenityOS component and the first reply is from the lead dev)
Oh… That’s… Disappointing. Firefox it is, then, for now.
It’s weird… It makes “business” sense, too. If you want people to use your stuff and you can choose to appeal to more people, why wouldn’t you? I think we’ve reached the stage of normalcy now where using “they” and “them” are not in itself something that would necessarily scare away right-wing users (given you want to keep appealing to that attractive market, too.)
What are we reacting to here? The single comment from the actual dev saying that the project wanted to avoid politics? Or the actual hateful comment from some bystander?
Ladybird has split from SerenityOS and from that community. Hopefully the bystander has been left behind.
As for the actual project founder, if all he has ever said is that one statement, I am impressed with his level of restraint given how some have vilified him for it.
with mandatory male pronouns for users in the documentation.
(and no politics allowed!)
note
this issue was resolved eventually by another dev; afaik the lead dev stopped commenting on it after he closed a PR and said people who wanted to remove the docs’ implied assumption of users’ maleness were “advertising personal politics”.
edit: ok, i went and checked, here are the details:
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https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814 is the first PR he closed in 2021 saying “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
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https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/24648 is the PR where it was eventually fixed, after it was publicized in july 2024
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here https://xcancel.com/awesomekling/status/1808294414101467564 the day after the fix was merged, he sort-of almost apologized, while also doubling-down on his defense of his decision to reject the first PR 🤡
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser) was later spun out of SerenityOS in to its own project
can I get some context for this, what is the reference to? I stopped caring about new browsers and now just use Firefox 🤷♀️
Let’s see how ladybird writes docs in the future. Will they assume the user is a man and shut down any corrections for being political?
Hey it could be worse. It could be the completely and utterly worthless MIT license.
BSD license is the only thing that annoys me. Chrome not by google.
