The Xlibre case brings out the worst in the open source community. Those of us who thought that with the incorporation of companies into development we would have the best of both worlds were completely wrong. We have the worst of both worlds: greed, egos, monopolistic ambitions, incompetence, and self-interest.
In my defense, I can say that this is not due to newcomers like Microsoft, but to individuals and companies that have been working with open source for several decades.
A little context
Since the 80s, Unix and its derivative and/or inspired operating systems have used X11 as a window manager to provide a graphical interface. In the case of Linux, in particular, it is (still) a variant called Xorg. Eighteen years ago, Red Hat decided that rather than improve X.org, it would be better to write a project from scratch. The problem is that while Wayland is a more modern protocol and fixes many of Xorg's flaws, it never achieved its full capabilities. However, since IBM, through Red Hat, directly or indirectly controls several open source projects, several distributions and projects decided to discontinue support.
The Xlibre case brings out the worst in the community
And this is where I must warn readers that I'm walking a tightrope. I'm trying to find the truth among the tech-friendly bloggers and conspiracy theorists.
On June 5, 2025, Enrico Weigelt, described by some as Xorg's most active developer, decided to fork it called Xlibre. This project promises to continue Xorg where it left off. (according to some, paralyzed). The first version of Xlibre promises to include more than 3000 improvements and fixes.
But the mother of all sheep is that Weigelt declared that it was going to be a DEI-free project.
What is DEI?
Let's do a little brother-in-law psychology. At some point, the free and open source software movement stopped being a movement of techies only and began to attract activists. who see it as a way to fight for their social goals. The code took a backseat to combating capital, social inequality, racism, and advancing the gender agenda.
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In theory, it seeks to create work environments that value individual differences and promote equal opportunities for all. Critics say it constitutes reverse racism, favoring race, gender, or sexual orientation over technical competence.
A bit of conspiracy theories.
At this point, we have on one hand companies trying to impose their technologies and on the other people trying to impose their agenda. Red Hat and Freedesktop.org (the entity responsible for Xorg) responded by blocking Weigelt's access to the repositories and removing his contributions.
On the ideological side, it was recalled that Weigelt had a well-known controversy with Linus Torvalds for using the Linux kernel development mailing list to oppose COVID vaccination.
Leaving aside the ideological, The only criticisms of Xlibre are its lack of developers and doubts that it can continue over time without the support of major distributions and main desktops. Everyone agrees that Wayland is still a long way from being ready, especially in the accessibility aspect, and instead of focusing on this, the responses from these distributions and projects consist of more blockages or questioning the ideological motivations of those promoting Xlibre.
Although Weigelt's contributions to Xorg were not without problems: errors in license management, breaking RandR functionalities (resolution and rotation) or adding changes that affected compatibility with NVIDIA graphics card drivers.
For now, Linux distributions such as Devuan, Arch Linux and OpenMnadriva have plans to include Xlibre in their repositories.
But when ideology and greed come in, principles and technology come out.