Truly independent web browser

Can you provide some context?

Edit: I found the context. Here and here.

maybe I'm not seeing where the smoking gun is, here. I see a guy saying something akin to "can we not do this here in the github please"

and then I see a bunch of people blowing up and yelling about "dehumanization" over it.

...why is this such a huge deal exactly?
- Absolutely nothing. The fact that they had to bring up a totally irrelevant 3 year old issue during an event that is supposed to be celebrated tells you a lot. They have been blatantly brigading various communities just for attention, and probably to get the dev cancelled or something. Even this post, the privacy community does not need this whole chain of replies. And yet, they overshadow every legit discussion with this bullshit unprompted.
  
  so I don't understand. why are all these comments yelling the same stuff? did they just decide to harass this one guy for saying "take it somewhere else, please"?
  
  I'm trying to find anything malicious in anything he's said. I'm finding nothing but a dude working on a browser.
  
  this kind of behavior scares me greatly. I know individuals who have been victims of real transphobia. this seems to be a simple language difference. and I think targeting this guy is a mistake.
  
  Flooding and being loud doesn't make them right. it just means they're loud.
  
  I’m trying to find anything malicious in anything he’s said
  
  They use the "silence is violence" trope to harass and terrorize projects, hiding behind their "protected status" as a transgender. Whenever someone rejects anything that calls for "greater inclusion", they go nuclear and tell all their friends to do the same. The bullied becomes the bully. It's very childish. It's always people that never contribute any meaningful code as well.
  
  edit omg I'm sorry I was replying to the wrong comment. they got me fucked up. lol
  
  I'm with you. i see this a lot in the lgbt community and nobody calls them out on it.
  
  Open mindedness is a key factor for success (especially in open source). Inclusivity demonstrates open mindedness. The fact that the lead dev goes out of his way to prevent such a minor change (it's not even like people demanded a strict CoC or something) is a bad signal
  
  he hasn't gone out of his way. he just thinks its irrelevant to make a report about it. and he is correct. thats not what github report is for.
  
  these commenters are hitting this guy for something so small it's not worth getting angry over.
  
  they're calling this guy a transphobe for saying "please take this somewhere else. this is not the appropriate place" nothing about that is malicious or transphobic. at all.
  
  They didn’t make a “report”, I think the word you’re looking for is “issue”. What they did was open a “pull request” that got rejected. So more of a “hey I made a small change to make everything more inclusive that will not affect you in any way” and the dev said “please don’t be political here”.
  
  The person suggesting the change wasn’t being political but the dev was by rejecting the change
  
  "us/them" mentality doesn't help much. this is surely a great fuss for a 3 year old pr but you're misrepresenting the situation:
  
  serenityOS (and consequently ladybird) has rather strict rules about wording documentation: they enforce language style and even date formats
  
  that wasn't a report, but a PR: rather than pressing ~50 keys on your keyboard and then a "lock" button he could have just pressed the "merge" button and integrated those ~10 total characters changes
  
  github issues are routinely used to fix wording: documentation often lives on git and it's useful to have it version controlled, even plain documents without attached source are kept on git so that their edit history is accessible and manageable
  
  folks are making a big fuss but Andreas really set himself up: just say sorry and change 4 words, such a weird horse to die on
  
  Yup, the other side is pretty counterproductive with saying the project is dehumanizing etc. They're absurdly exaggerating.
  
  It wasn't just a report tho, it's a PR that could've been merged with a single click
  
  I hope this guy has himself a nice whiskey and a break. and I hope the commenters find some other fixation soon.
  
  I agree with that, I read the comments and I agree about exaggeration. At the same time it is not something political to just adjust the documentation to use gender neutral terms as it is a professional thing to do. Where would be the place to discuss it considering that the only way to modify the code is from GitHub and PR?
  
  Don't use it I guess. At the end of the day not everyone shares the same views. Also it probably didn't want the Github issue to blow up.
- Open mindedness is a key factor for success (especially in open source). Inclusivity demonstrates open mindedness. The fact that the lead dev goes out of his way to prevent such a minor change (it's not even like people demanded a strict CoC or something) is a bad signal
- Changing "he" to "they" isn't a political change, or shouldn't be if you're not a fucking shithead
Can you provide some context?

This Mastodon post discusses it and has links to the PRs: https://ruby.social/@denis/112718132053579597

This one for SerenityOS shows Kling's response to a very minor and neutral change.
Maybe I’m dumb, but I completely do not understand what the dev did to upset people.

I read the thread and I’m confused about it.
- People get upset over anything tbh

Thanks for the heads up. Not worth the time

Chill. Read the cited sources. It's someone asking the community to not use the github forum for discussing the completely irrelevant topic. It's not a fucking open forum it's for developers to use as a resource. I don't care if the person was giving out a $1,000,000 to anyone that commented, find an appropriate place to post your comments. I saw nothing against the topic itself but a bunch of angry responses. I mean if you read and are like na fuck that dude than 100% that's your take but that's the thing, its YOUR take. I hate seeing people so quick to draw the fuck this or fuck that card from absolutely zero rhetoric than what an anonymous internet comment said.
- Treating social media as social media makes sense. If you don’t want your issue tracker to turn out like this, then stop using the social media code forge.

for someone who can speak a language that lacks gendered pronouns, this "hysteria" over he/she/they is ridiculous!

As someone who speaks a language with gendered pronouns but no neutral option, this is very awkward to deal with.
- yes, it's awkward for the "individual" who is longing for reliable expression
  
  it also seems to be awkward for people who can't figure out the changes in the language they think as their own. They are irritated by their "disfigured" reflection
  
  it's awkward for officials who need to make decisions (positive or negative) about the use of "inclusive" language
  
  we give shape to languages and languages shape us
  
  English could initially have neutral pronouns and people would be obliged to find other reasons to hate each other 🤷
Well on the contrary you should understand it more. A gendered pronoun carries an idea of gender, and having a genderless pronoun frees the sentence of this gender assumption. Nothing very hard to understand.
- that's what i thought i meant but thanks for the lesson I've never needed
  
  even your comment is, for me, coming from that ridiculous tension

Just so you know, most east of and with baltic states think like this.

That's enough brigading for today

What the fuck have to do one thing with another. You people are so fucked up . You make drama from anything imaginable

Kling is the one "making drama"

Do you think there are no assholes working for google or mozilla? Assholes are everywhere. And fuck cancel culture.

Edit: I stand by what I said, you can downvote me all you want. It doesn’t matter to me one bit.

Cancel culture, this far-right myth that fascists love so much. You forgot to continue and talk about freedom of speech and how you are a centrist.
- Where is the anti pronoun shit though? I've only seen one cited link and it was asking not to use the forum for discussing irrelevant topics. Github forums are resources used by all levels of developers for finding answers for issues with open source no instruction manual software development. Nothing i saw was anti-gender or pronoun anything (didt read thru the responding comments from users but why would they reflect on the person in question? Am I missing something beyond what op commented without providing any rhyme, reason or resource for?
  
  Edit: now I'm even more confused after reading a second commenter's link that shows they made the requested edit.
Removed

people can have different views. you might not like them but it's their views, not yours

I don’t like bigotry
- I think most people would not agree that that's what this actually is. Plus, attacking people for having an opinion is not how you progress in ANY way, whether societal or technical. This likely means they have some ulterior motive i.e. they just want to see the world burn and they were never actually going to contribute anything meaningful in the first place. I always check the activity history of people like that, and look into what kind of person they are in general, what they typically say and what kind of opinions they have. Often you will be shocked, disgusted and saddened. One of the other like-minded people that posted a similar story here on lemmy about the same drama, literally has a picture on their social of them wearing a hat that says "gender terrorist" and they also sell explicit content of themselves on fansly.
  
  defending bigotry isn't progress, and outright lying in the face of obvious bigotry isn't doing yourself - or anyone - any favors.
  
  "don't believe your lying eyes" is a line that only works on the most stupid and gullible, and you're not going to get very far by telling your audience they're too stupid to know better.
  
  oh, and if you think that defending bigotry is "contributing something meaningful," think again.
  
  perhaps you should ask yourself: why do you like bigotry so much that you must dedicate so much time and effort and space to defending it? what sort of person does that make you?
  
  it's not bigotry. this is a massive nothing burger.
  
  "don't believe your lying eyes"
  
  we covered that lie already. know any other tunes?
  
  how about explaining why you so enthusiastically defend bigotry?
- yeah but does that affect the browser development process significantly?
  
  there are people with differing views in this world and you need to accept that if you want to actually achieve things
  
  I'm not saying i agree with him bc I don't, but I wouldn't base my opinion on the project on the small grievance i have with one dev's opinions.
  
  I don’t need to accept bigotry. I can just use a different browser.
  
  have fun with google spyware ig when they finally do something like web environment integrity
  
  Or we can just keep using firefox
  
  I like that Firefox exists and I use it and its forks but I really doubt that the aging gecko engine could be made competitive with chromium anytime soon enough to claw back market share to stop google doing shit like web environment integrity. Mozilla stopped work on Servo and they're also kinda sus in terms of how they seem to be fine with receiving funding from google.
  
  It is just disappointing. But people forget that there are many FOSS projects that we widely use where the developers have shitty ignorant opinions. Maybe peoples uproar is directly related to the refusal to merge a simple grammar change, which seems very anti-open source. Or maybe that the Dev has a code of conduct that speaks about inclusivity which they weaponized to justify not merging, as to be "politically-inclusive" (aka some people dont believe that "they" can be used for one person lmao). It just feels like they are choosing a weird hill to die on and also being a hypocrite by being so intentional obtuse, and of course the devs abrasive and accusatory method of responding on multiple occasions.
  
  I think it is harder to separate the Dev from their creation when it relates to open source. It really is a passion of the heart a lot of the time. But that doesn't make the tech any less interesting.
  
  I see your argument and I agree, but I just believe that with these talented/intelligent/passionate (valuable imo) people it's better to dedicate their limited valuable time to things they exceed at, not time for them to "correct" their sometimes ignorant opinions. We can ignore their ignorance, we can't replace their value.
  
  When getting people to "correct" their opinions, my opinion is that they're far more likely to learn to mask their opinions, having to be constantly conscious of how others will respond to what they're saying and reducing their work throughput in the process.
  
  Poor behavior can be corrected. Ignoring bigotry and letting it slide hurts others. That’s not acceptable
  
  Poor behavior can be corrected.
  
  It can only be corrected if the person actually starts believing that the "correct" idea is actually correct. That's way harder than for them to simply pretend like they believe the "correct" idea, which they'll obviously do first. Isn't that a waste of time?
And it's my view that we are free to dunk on people with bad views.
- i don't get why sane people would rather a person with good opinions over a free independent web browser, the latter just seems so much more valuable to me.
  
  @Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
  
  @Gargari@lemmy.ml @Solumbran@lemmy.world @DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube
  
  This is sorta a hornets nest. On the one hand I get that when it comes to tech who cares about the persons personal life but on the other hand when it comes to free software there is a concern over the orgs or individuals that run them given the trust involved. Yes you can rely on the many eyes but you want to be confident of the org (or individual) to begin with.
  
  That's true and I'd probably not use the software myself if the dev was someone known for stealing credentials or something, but honestly I don't really see how someone viewing the use of "they" over "he" as political propaganda could affect the browser they're making negatively in a substantial way.
  
  I guess you could say that there is a possibility that he's saying that out of homophobia and when ladybird becomes as influential as google they could do some homophobic things? I really doubt that'd be allowed by governments though
  
  What, you only use software of honest and upstanding people? Cars too?
  
  Yes, I don't agree with the whole "separate the art from the artist" thing. It might be wrong but I don't care. If someone is openly rude and abusive to their users, publicly, for years on end with no remorse (cough Linus Torvalds), it just turns me off to the entire project.
  
  So you think you can draw a connection between someone's views on inclusive language and whether an individual or org can be trusted with software security.
  
  I'm sorry but to me this line of thinking is bonkers. The two things have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. What if a conservative individual argued that they have trust issues with an open source project because it features inclusive language now? The person might argue that they don't understand why devs would devote their limited time to such cosmetics instead of focusing on code quality. How would you view this argument? On Lemmy it would probably be ridiculed, and rightfully so. Yet it's the same line of thinking that I see if I interpreted your comment correctly.
  
  Look, the dev is a reactionary. He lists that the browser is unstable and intended for devs. So IF I were to use it, that would mean reporting issues and/or fixing issues myself. I'm not interested in working with a reactionary. So I will not be using this browser. You're welcome to use the browser if you want. At this time, I'm not interested.
  
  Sure everyone's free to use it or not, contribute to it or not. That's not related to my argument. I was only talking about making a connection between someone's political views and how much trust they deserve when it comes to e.g. security.
  
  Thats because you don't view it as a moral failing. How would racist language rank. What about nazi stuff. I mean none of that technically effects trustworthiness for running an org. Well ah. unless your the particular thing.
  
  interesting idea, I guess maybe we just think like that in selfishness? (idk if selfish is the right word here) if someone was to become the lead dev of a project like this and they were extremely hateful of my culture in particular or something, i'd prolly not want that guy to be the lead dev, but if they're not doing any harm i guess that's just my selfishness wanting them to reflect my views so my views get more recognised in society through the platform that they've earned? (though that'd be quite justified)
  
  overall though if that person wasn't causing actual harm, just publicly having that view there's no harm done and it'd be the most resource efficient to just let that person be. i'd probably complain but that's probably because we evolved to prioritise our own interests above that of society as a whole.
  
  though we all live in democracies and developers of foss projects shouldn't have to be where we gain our political voice, but I guess we just aren't there yet.
  
  Yes but not using inclusive language is far from counting as a moral failing in my world... It's far from racism, let alone nazi stuff. So what's that comparison good for?
  
  well yeah but thats you. the person who had the comment starting the change feels differently. Thats sorta the point im trying to make. That its understandable it just depends on how you view that attitude. So I see some merit to why they would avoid the software if they feel that viewpoint is a moral failing.
- Or you could be an adult and move on with your life. Shaming people for not sharing your groupthink ideology is such a strange way to spend your limited time on this earth.
  
  Shaming people for not sharing your groupthink ideology is such a strange way to spend your limited time on this earth.
  
  He said with no sense of irony.
  
  It's almost as if there is no irony.
  
  I only trust the people that don't comment, because they know it's not worth their time.
people can have different views. you might not like them but it’s their views, not yours

Yes, they can. And I can also view their views with disdain... or even horror and choose not to support their efforts, whatever they may be.

What you are really saying here is that you to some degree don't disagree with Kling and so it's this particular view you find acceptable to let pass. If it were something like "people should be fine eating small children" you might react differently.
- What you are really saying here is that you to some degree don’t disagree with Kling
  
  ok lmao ctrl f my history for "they"
  
  You don't disagree with Kling enough to object. This is clearly demonstrated here.
  
  Edit: Let me a little more clear. Kling is the one bringing politics into it. The change was simple (one word!) and technically correct. It would be like if I said "I want our new logo to be red" and you said "don't bring politics into it" when really I just like tomatoes and sunsets.
Did the OP say they couldn't have different views? You must have replied to the wrong comment.
- isn't that what they implied?
  
  I'm fine with solumbran seeing the dev's opinions as "wrong", I just find how they base their whole view of the project on that single small disagreement makes them seem like a shortsighted dumbass
  
  Oh that's not at all what they implied. They implied you shouldn't use the project based on the author's opinions. That's very different from implying the author isn't entitled to their opinions.
  
  Boycotting the software doesn't infringe on the author's rights to have a shitty opinion. It's called consequences for being an asshole.
  
  They implied you shouldn’t use the project based on the author’s opinions.
  
  that's what i said??
  
  Boycotting the software doesn’t infringe on the author’s rights to have a shitty opinion.
  
  how am i saying this? i'm saying that the guy is shortsighted for telling people to boycott the software just bc of the dev's opinions
  
  i'm not arguing about the arbitary rights of authors, i'm just saying that boycotting isn't an efficient use of resources

He is right, hey shouldn't push a political agenda. They can fork it if they don't like it. It is his choice and he is the one putting in the work, not you.

Refusing the change is pushing a political agenda too. But I guess it helps seeing which agenda you prefer ;)
- Well it isn't something that should be discussed in a Github issue.
  
  And where then? It is about changing a part of the software, that fits quite clearly an issue/pull request
  
  I’m sorry but “project documentation should not be discussed in a GitHub issue or pr” is what you’re going with?? Where the fuck else would you discuss it?

Based Andreas KING