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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people.

I really like the idea of Suckless, I wish the people involved with it directly addresses what to me seems to be a disturbing political slant at their conferences.

Of course, you can ignore that an just use the software. Or better yet look for other similar software created by people that are apolitical.

OpenBSD seems to be a place that does its best to be minimal, and their network setup to me is far better then anything else in Linux or the other BSDs.

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> Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people.

You're the only one bringing that up. So congrats on derailing the discussion again.

Is it really irrelevant? ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife. Perhaps he had good ideas but nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole now. Who wants to support a murderer?

I also moved away from a major mobile OS since its main dev started a crusade about a competing project. I'll leave the details vague not to get into the discussion. But it gave me an uneasy feeling. Is this the guy I want to maintain critical code on my device?

I'm not aware of the suckless people but the idea that the personal lives of the devs don't matter is not something completely irrelevant IMO.

> ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife.

That is unimportant for the purpose of considering whether or not ReiserFS is any good.

Looking on Wikipedia, I can already find one problem though, which is the year 2038 problem. Wikipedia also says "Some directory operations (including unlink(2)) are not synchronous on ReiserFS, which can result in data corruption with applications relying heavily on file-based locksif the machine halts before it has synchronized the disk."

So, there are a few problems with ReiserFS (although it might have good ideas too). But if the author murdered his wife, that is the problem with the author, not a problem with ReiserFS. (It is still a problem, but it is a problem with something else.)

Yeah my point is it's not that black and white.

When you use a product, you're supporting the owner, and the brand. In IT it's not as widely used but clothing brands sell their brand more than they sell a product. A lot of brands aren't that great quality but people wear them proudly as a form of expression. Even regardless of the fact that they're made by little kids in a sweatshop half a world away. People judge us by the products we choose. It's a human thing. Pretending this phenomenon doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.

It can also clarify what to expect from the authors in the future and what direction they will go into with their product. In that sense it's more of a practical continuity-type of thing. In the case of Reiser, it's kinda hard to lead a thriving product when one is in jail for life.

Again I don't know what the deal is with suckless and their people (in fact if Poettering doesn't like them that's a plus for them in my book ;) ), but I don't see the people behind it and the product as two separate things.

I'm pretty ignorant beyond they're software devs who write stuff I like. I understand if you don't want to bring up their politics here and potentially ruin this thread too, but if it can be done tastefully I'd be curious about their politics.

I searched a bit and this is what I got: https://www.reddit.com/r/systemd/comments/qg1g88/poettering_...

Here's the twitter thread that link ultimately leads to: https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208

The Poettering/systemd crowd are basically mutual enemies of suckless at this point.

I would just do a search in google :) It was also mentioned by L. Poettering on his twitter account a few years ago.

I would like to see this thread stay true to Suckless itself (for a change).

Probably shouldn't have brought it up unprompted in the first comment on the thread then.

This all looks bad enough that I'm not sure it's reasonable to separate their "politics" from the people.

I think if a project has Nazis involved in it, that should probably be front and center in any discussion about it.

The evidence seems to be:

- One dude once blamed post-WWI treatment of Germany for the rise in nationalism that led to Hitler

- They once hiked using torches instead of flashlights. Only they're German so this was near Nuremberg.

- They named a mail server "Wolf's Lair." Only they're German so this was in German.

Is there a public record anywhere of any of them defending the Holocaust or making anti-Semitic statements?

> They named a mail server "Wolf's Lair." Only they're German so this was in German.

A single developer associated with suckles has a private machine with the "wolfsschanze" hostname. This is a big difference with "suckless has a mail server named wolfsschanze".

> A single developer associated

Laslo is the first chair of the board, not just "a single developer".

Even the appearance of association with Nazis should set off giant warning flags. "Haha I used a German word that's generally associated with Nazis but isn't technically that, this is a joke I promise" almost always means that the person is a Nazi.

Wolfsschanze is a word that never occurs accidentally in German language today. If you use it, it's always in a historic or Nazi context.

Well, they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups, they send emails through relays with hostnames like "Wolfsschanze" and devs with official suckless flair post on [website that's basically a clone of HN] complaining about "cultural marxism".

Obviously, you still have to interpret that yourself, but these are the facts about the people behind suckless.

> [website that's basically a clone of HN]

Which site is that?

https://lobste.rs/

> they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups

And?

> they send emails through relays with hostnames like "Wolfsschanze"

A single developer has a private machine named this. There is no plural "they" here.

> devs with official suckless flair post on [website that's basically a clone of HN] complaining about "cultural marxism".

I believe the flair is kind of "sticky" on Lobsters, so that's probably more of an accident than anything else. Regardless, it's a single developer voicing their personal opinion (the same as the one with the "Wolfsschanze" hostname) and there is no plural "they" here either.

Lobsters hats are not the same as e.g. reddit flairs, but rather something to specifically turn on when speaking in its context: "A hat is a formal, verified, way of posting a comment while speaking for a project, organization, or company. Each user may have multiple hats, one of which may be selected to be worn when posting a comment or sending a private message."

Yes, I am aware. But I believe how it works in the UI is that you select it for a post and then it will get automatically applied for all new posts until you turn it off (i.e. it's sticky, either for the thread or globally). Or at least, that's what I've been told as I don't have any "hats". So, it's pretty easy to accidentally apply it.

There is no single person who can speak "for" suckless in the same way some rep can speak "for" Microsoft or Y Combinator or whatnot, so that description doesn't really apply in the first place.

"Cultural marxism" is a Nazi dogwhistle tho

The number "88" can be. Norse mythology can be. A shaven head can be. Military boots can be. Lots of things can be, but you need look at the context. The entire point of a "dogwhistle" is that it looks innocent and that it can be easily confused as such, and this automatically means there are also plenty of innocent uses of such things. A "X is a dog-whistle for Y" assertion is meaningless.

Plus, "Vaguely right-wing" or even "extreme right-wing" is not identical to "Nazi".

Without context, maybe. But we have the context here, and so even if you pretend there is an actively used other sense it's patently obvious that the term is used in the "evil leftist world-conspiracy" sense.

Having read the "cultural Marxism" thread, I did not get the impression of "Nazi". I'd have to go find it, but I thought it was stupid and wrong, but really not that bad – certainly not as bad as people make it out to be, which just seems to hinge on the usage of a particular phrase. Even "evil leftist world-conspiracy" doesn't really apply IIRC, which is not the same as "Nazi" in any case. Have people forgotten that the genocide of millions of people was at the core of Nazi ideology?

Kulturbolschewismus (cultural bolshevism) was a Nazi coinage used to refer to a sinister Jewish conspiracy to undermine German culture with Bolshevik elements. The cultural Marxism meme is as explicitly Nazi as is "sieg heil" and "Arbeit macht frei".

Isn't the kind of completely non-commercial open source that they practice kinda akin to Marxism? Serious question.

I agree, but openbsd is actually the opposite of a minimal system, I can do more, out of the box, with an openbsd system than any linux distro I have tried, and yet openbsd feels minimal, openbsd manages to make a very rich system in ~ 1GB, a linux distro takes ~5gb and does less and windows takes ~20gb and I have no idea how it can use so much space and do so little.

The OpenBSD folks aren't exactly the most friendly folks, so don't think hanging out there is without drama. But at least they don't go out of their way to justify putting nazi imagery on their homepage.

Many times, when I see cool software projects are posted here, I go onto the about pages or personal blogs of the authors, to see what else they've made. And what I often see is a lot of absurd, hateful, deranged, wrong, extremist takes on their blogs and twitter feeds. Stuff that I find distasteful or outright horrifying. But they're leftist (or "centrist"), so there's no point complaining about it on HN.

I would bet 98% of all open-source software written is by left-wing or apolitical people. Suckless is one of the few islands of (crypto-)right wing outlook. And if that bothers you and you have to make a fuss, go ahead. But maybe ask yourself why you can't be satisfied with a mere 98%.

Consider that conflating “right” and “fascist” helps the fascists and hinders the rest of the conservative folk.

There are a lot of conservative, liberal, or left-wing people I disagree with. The difference between them and fascists is that they're not threatening to take away my right to disagree with them by violence, nor do they typically suggest that people like me and my friends should be killed or imprisoned for being who we are. This is a fundamental difference that can't be reduced to a "both sides have extremists" analysis.

Both the far left and the far right have told me I shouldn't have rights and that I should be sent to the camps. From my perspective it really is a 'both sides have extremists' situation.

Well, duh. But using "butbutbut the wackos on the other side do bad things too!" as a tool to neuter the conversation is a cop-out at best.

> The difference between them and fascists is that they're not threatening to take away my right to disagree with them by violence

> nor do they typically suggest that people like me and my friends should be killed or imprisoned for being who we are

I think you should reevaluate that. Far too many people have been cancelled and imprisoned in the world by the self-righteous authoritarians you are defending right now.

Hell, I'm living in a country that's about to descend into literal communism mere days from now. Among the many laws they're going to implement, there are "political intolerance" laws that criminalize intolerance towards leftists in general society, in the job market and pretty much any context. It will be a crime to boycott a business if you don't agree with their politics, for example. They're calling it the "big democracy package" but I don't believe for a second the "right wing nazis" will receive any protection.

Brazil is going to go literal communist?

I think you're exaggerating a tad.

Well I don't think it's any exaggeration at all.

The president has said multiple times in the past decades that he intends to install socialism in Brazil. He's tried it before in past governments with plans to relativize private property rights, regulate the press, heavily tax great fortunes and whatnot. Even the press that campaigned for him relentlessly these last four years used to criticize that. There's a judiciary dictatorship on top of all that with the congress and senate being completely worthless, just like in Venezuela. Lula is now old, cancerous, with nothing to lose and vengeful due to being arrested for corruption and his party losing the previous election to "fascists". He was openly threatening other politicians who didn't ally with him even before the election. After the election, I saw him tell journalists they could work but "without badmouthing the government".

It's no exaggeration at all to believe this country is finished. Anyone who believed in a moderate government has already jumped ship and wished good luck to anyone still in this shithole. I'm thinking of getting the fuck out of here myself, I only hesitate because of my family.

> Anyone who believed in a moderate government has already jumped ship

So how is that different to Bolsanaro?

Uh, in every possible way? Not once did I see him censoring anyone. Not even himself, in the numerous moments where he really should have kept his mouth shut. I didn't see him try to reappropriate private property to illegal invaders. He didn't create 10+ bullshit ministries, he instead sought to reduce the government machinery, bureaucracy, expenses and taxes.

If you think the next four years are going to be anything like the last four years or even the last two decades, I really don't know what to say.

> I didn't see him try to reappropriate private property to illegal invaders

I suppose the slash and burn agriculture he explicitly encouraged in the Amazon involved legal invaders, so that's fair.

Personally I don't really care about the Amazon at all. Developed countries exploited their own natural resources, what right do they have to condemn anyone else for doing the same? I'd happily sacrifice that entire jungle if it brought wealth and prosperity to the people of the brazilian north and northeast. This country seriously needs to develop those regions.

It's a moot point anyway. Bolsonaro no longer matters, and I'm not interested in discussing the past any longer. What matters is the future and it's not looking good. It looks like you have no comments to make on the future so I guess this is where this conversation ends.

>I'd happily sacrifice that entire jungle if it brought wealth and prosperity to the people of the brazilian north and northeast.

Good luck fighting the climate change with nickel and cellulose.

> This is a fundamental difference that can't be reduced to a "both sides have extremists" analysis.

So tankies who glorify Stalin and would take away people's right to disagree with them by violent means and sometimes kill and/or imprison them, because "nazis" (and we've all witnessed a very prominent example of exactly this happening in 2022) are just not a thing in your worldview, I take it? "Both sides have extremists" is not just some throwaway remark or whataboutism, it's advising caution about a very real phenomenon.

I'm very left, and tankies are also outside my personal Overton window.

I don't like or associate with Stalinists, but they also have zero political influence in the United States.

Who is threatening to take away any rights? Who is disagreeing using violence? Is this any real problem right now?

It very much is. If you live in the USA, please be thankful that you have freedom of expression and a culture that values such rights. This is not the norm in many parts of the world.

Is this related to suckless?

> Suckless is one of the few islands of right wing outlook.

It has a concerning concentration of outright neo nazis.

If that's what you consider acceptable "right wing outlook", I can see how you'd consider "98% of all open-source software written is by left-wing or apolitical people [or "centrists"]", and that this is apparently bad.

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