Hyprland is a toxic community

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

beteljuice,

I stopped using it because of a couple shitty interactions on Discord. I don’t know anything about the developer himself but the company he keeps sucks. Using the word “cucked” when talking about breaks in dependencies… and being told “see if I care” when pointing out a race condition I found in initialization that caused problems with multimonitor setups.

No thanks. Sway works great. No need for eye candy.

kilgore_trout,

Take every opinion from Drew DeVault with a grain of salt.

SirPlus,

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

xavier666,

Your first mistake was joining a Discord group for a software product. Github pages / bug-tracker or GTFO.

mojo,

this guy just learned about discord general chats lol

they’re all this bad, and also they’re absolutely dogshit for open source software so I have no idea why people make them

leastprivilege,

I just switched to hyprland and although the discord general chat isn’t for everyone, they have been helpful when I ask stupid questions and need a little help.

spiffeeroo,

Hyprland dev’s response to blog post: blog.vaxry.net/articles/2023-hyprlandsCommunity

Kata1yst,
@Kata1yst@kbin.social avatar

What a tone-deaf response, yikes.

InstallGentoo,

His response is perfectly rational. You need to stop getting offended over every small thing on the internet.

zwekihoyy,

treating people respectfully is not getting offended. please touch some grass and open your eyes.

MBM,

The final bit is interesting. Vaxry says Q (who was openly bigoted) got punished, but doesn’t mention prisj (who was slightly less open about it).

#general does indeed sometimes have jokes that some people might treat as “controversial”.

And if you really need a place with controversial jokes, split it off from your support server or something.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

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

kionite231,

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

sado1,

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.

RegalPotoo,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

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”

ReversalHatchery,

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

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

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?

starman,
@starman@programming.dev avatar

As someone on HackerNews said:

I’ve never felt the need for any “community” for my window manager of choice

phario,

Hmmm. If abuse happens, is the right idea to say that “I don’t need this community”?

I’m not sure how that HackerNews comment helps in the slightest. If my university has an obscure basket weaving community and people are getting abused in that community, should I just say “Eh we don’t actually need a basket weaving community”.

It’s also amusing to me that a commenter on a relatively obscure and niche website is complaining that that don’t need (or care about abuse that transpired on) a niche community from another website. And then this comment is echoed in yet another niche community.

RaivoKulli,

“You shouldn’t use this window manager because their community is toxic”

“I’m not going to interact with the community”

Seems fair enough

NeededWorthyOponents,

For real. Not everything needs to be a fucking subculture. Next they’ll be saying, “The WinRAR community is toxic”. Like no, your discord server is poorly moderated. The problem starts and ends there.

starman,
@starman@programming.dev avatar

I just wanted to point out that it’s ridiculous to form some kind religion¹ around a wayland compositor.

Also, I don’t want anybody to think I’m supporting what’s happening there. I just don’t really care about Hyprland’s community because I’m not part of it.

¹Hyprland’s discord server is named “Church of Hyprland”

aard,
@aard@kyu.de avatar

This is a pretty old joke. See “Church of Emacs”.

wispydust,

Hmm, I feel like there’s some nuances around Hyprland (and it’s kind of window managers) that makes having a place for discussion valuable.

  • Plugin development discussions
  • Configuration recipes and troubleshooting (Configs for tiling wm’s often are like 500-line software projects)
  • …and sometimes its just fun to chat with like-minded people who share a similar philosophy on the tools they use on their computers

I’m not a hyprland user, but I find it valuable to lurk around SwayWM communities on Discord and Reddit.

sky,

[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.

fhein,

Unclear if you’re referring to the meme or if serious, so I’m gonna leave this here just in case: knowyourmeme.com/…/there-are-no-girls-on-the-inte…

sky,

given I am a woman who is currently on the internet, I am aware there are women on the internet.

thanks for explaining that for me 😉

KSPAtlas,
@KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz avatar

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

drspod,

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.

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