The Price of Software Freedom is Eternal Politics
Many don't realize or forget, but the FOSS world has ideological wings, too
Comment The world of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is often perceived as a purely technical realm, driven by collaborative development and shared code. However, beneath the surface of commits and code reviews lies a complex web of politics, ideology, and conflicting philosophies. Recent events surrounding the X.org X11 server and its alternatives starkly illustrate that the pursuit of 'software freedom' is far from apolitical; it is, in fact, steeped in eternal political struggle.
A prime example of this ongoing tension is the emergence of a new fork of the venerable X.org display server. As The Register has covered at some length, this fork, dubbed Xlibre, was initiated by German developer Enrico Weigelt. Weigelt is a figure who has previously attracted attention for his contributions to X.org and, at times, for being a controversial figure within the community.
The stated motivation behind Xlibre is rooted in a perceived stagnation of X.org development, which Weigelt attributes, in part, to Red Hat's alleged prioritization of the newer Wayland display protocol. This accusation, whether accurate or not, highlights the significant influence that major corporate players like Red Hat (an IBM subsidiary) wield within the FOSS ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, given Weigelt's allegations and the project's subsequent controversies, Fedora, a distribution heavily sponsored by Red Hat, elected not to include Xlibre in its upcoming release, Fedora 43. The fact that its inclusion was even proposed in the first place, as noted on the Fedora Project wiki, speaks to the underlying desire among some users and developers to see continued investment in the X11 architecture.
The Political Dimension of Xlibre
Beyond the technical disagreements about the future of display servers, Xlibre has become a focal point for ideological conflict. The project is described as both technologically conservative and politically Conservative. Its proponents favor the established X11 tools over the newer Wayland, reflecting a technical conservatism. However, the project's GitHub README explicitly states that it is "explicitly free of any 'DEI' or similar discriminatory policies" and intentionally includes an empty Code of Conduct file. This stance, coupled with reports of Weigelt's alignment with extremely right-wing politics, injects a potent political element into the project.
This political positioning has not gone unnoticed, nor has it universally deterred interest. At the time of the original article, Xlibre had garnered significant attention on GitHub, with thousands of stars and hundreds of forks and watchers. Its Telegram channel also boasted a substantial membership. Furthermore, the project has begun to gain traction among certain Linux distributions. The Devuan project, known for its stance against the systemd init system, has publicly posted about its support on X (formerly Twitter). Similarly, Artix Linux, another systemd-free distribution, has tweeted about Xlibre and even made testing ISO files available with Xlibre pre-installed.
The controversy surrounding Xlibre's political stance prompted a strong reaction from other parts of the FOSS community. Ariadne Conill, a developer involved with Alpine Linux, described the group behind Xlibre as "neofascist reactionaries" and pointed out that their fork had allegedly introduced new security bugs. This comment, quoted in the original article, highlights the deep ideological chasm that Xlibre has exposed.
Wayback: A Reactionary Project?
As an indirect consequence of the Xlibre announcement and the surrounding controversy, Ariadne Conill accelerated the release of the Wayback display server. Wayback takes a different approach to supporting traditional X11 environments; it aims to allow existing X11 desktops and window managers to run under XWayland, effectively replacing the need for a separate X11 server while leveraging a Wayland compositor. This project can be seen, in part, as a direct response to Xlibre, offering an alternative path forward for those who wish to maintain compatibility with traditional X11 applications and environments without associating with Xlibre's controversial politics.
Conill's blog post, "Two weeks of wayback," details the project's progress and showcases its ability to run classic window managers like Window Maker, a NeXT-style environment that The Reg previously reviewed. The project has quickly gained legitimacy, becoming an official Freedesktop project and even adopting a new logo that echoes the X.org Foundation branding, perhaps symbolizing a continuation or evolution rather than a hard fork.
However, the intensity of the debate is not limited to the Xlibre vs. Wayback/Wayland axis. Criticism of Wayland itself, even when technically grounded, can be met with strong reactions. The original article notes that meticulously reasoned Wayland criticism has been dismissed with phrases like "wayland-is-a-conspiracy nuts," which is described as extreme and unfair. This illustrates how deeply entrenched positions are and how quickly technical discussions can devolve into personal or ideological attacks.
The Inherent Politics of FOSS
The strong reactions and ideological clashes are inherent to the FOSS landscape because FOSS itself is fundamentally political. The term "FOSS" is an umbrella that attempts to unify two distinct, and in some ways, opposing movements: Free Software and Open Source. Understanding the difference between these two philosophies is crucial to grasping the political dynamics within the community.
Free Software, a movement formalized in the 1980s by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), is explicitly focused on user freedom. The "free" in Free Software refers to liberty, not price. The four essential freedoms defined by the FSF are: the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose; the freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does your computing as you wish (requiring access to the source code); the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor; and the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. This philosophy is deeply rooted in principles of personal liberty, community, and the rejection of proprietary control over software. It can be seen as having a left-leaning, almost socialist, bent in its emphasis on sharing and collective benefit.
In contrast, Open Source emerged later, in the late 1990s, partly as a reaction to the FSF's more radical stance and terminology. Promoted by figures like Eric S. Raymond, author of the influential essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," the Open Source movement focused on the practical benefits of open development, particularly for businesses. The argument was that developing software in the open, with collaborative processes and peer review, leads to higher quality, more robust, and more secure software. This approach is more pragmatic and business-friendly, emphasizing methodology and quality over the ethical imperative of user freedom. Eric S. Raymond's own personal page, which advocates for the Libertarian Party and expresses strong views on topics like firearms control, provides some insight into the different ideological underpinnings of this movement compared to Free Software.
Richard Stallman himself has famously stated that "Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software," arguing that while Open Source licenses often satisfy the Free Software definition, the movement's focus on development methodology and business benefits distracts from the fundamental ethical issue of user freedom. The term "FOSS" attempts to bridge this gap, but it often obscures the significant philosophical differences between the two camps. This inherent tension means that debates within FOSS are rarely purely technical; they often carry echoes of these foundational ideological divides.
The Influence of Corporate Power
Adding another layer of complexity to the FOSS political landscape is the increasing influence of large corporations. While FOSS originated from academic and grassroots communities, its success has made it indispensable to the tech industry. Companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and others are major contributors and sponsors of FOSS projects. This corporate involvement brings resources and stability but also introduces corporate interests and priorities, which may not always align with the ideals of either Free Software or Open Source purists.
Red Hat, acquired by IBM in 2018, is arguably the most significant corporate force in the Linux and FOSS world today. Its employees maintain vast amounts of code and contribute heavily to critical infrastructure projects, including the Linux kernel, systemd (written by a former Red Hat employee), and desktop environments like GNOME. Red Hat's strong push towards Wayland is a clear example of how corporate strategy can influence the direction of FOSS development. While proponents argue Wayland is technically superior and necessary for modern graphics stacks, critics see it as a disruption that breaks compatibility with decades of X11-based tools and workflows, potentially consolidating power or control in the hands of the entities driving the transition.
The irony, as highlighted in the original article, is that Wayland, often presented as the modern, forward-looking alternative favored by the more progressive elements of the community (partly in opposition to projects like Xlibre), is heavily sponsored by IBM. IBM, incorporated in 1911, is one of the oldest and most traditional technology companies in the world. This creates a fascinating dynamic where the 'new' technology is backed by the 'old' establishment, while the 'old' technology (X11) is defended by both technical conservatives and, in the case of Xlibre, politically conservative factions, as well as those simply resistant to change or corporate influence.
The X11 vs. Wayland Debate: More Than Technical
The technical debate between X11 and Wayland is a long-standing one. X11, first released in 1989 as part of MIT's Project Athena, is a network-transparent windowing system. Its architecture, where the X server acts as an intermediary between applications (clients) and the display hardware, has been both its strength (flexibility, remote display) and its weakness (complexity, security vulnerabilities, performance overhead). X.org, the current dominant implementation, was itself a fork of XFree86 in 2004, which in turn had roots in earlier commercial and MIT implementations. No single entity has ever truly 'owned' X11; it's an open standard with a long history of diverse implementations.
Wayland, designed with modern graphics stacks and security in mind, simplifies the architecture by having applications render directly to a compositor, which then handles displaying windows and managing input. This promises better performance, reduced latency, and improved security. However, the transition has been slow and painful, partly because Wayland breaks compatibility with many existing X11-based tools, utilities, and desktop environments. While major desktop environments like GNOME and KDE have made significant strides in supporting Wayland, the vast ecosystem of smaller window managers and legacy applications still heavily relies on X11 or the XWayland compatibility layer.
The push towards Wayland by major distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu (which reportedly plans to drop the GNOME X11 session) is a significant factor in this debate. It signals an industry-wide shift, driven by the resources and priorities of large companies. This shift is met with resistance not just from those who prefer the technical characteristics of X11 or are invested in the existing ecosystem, but also from those who are wary of the increasing centralization of development influence in the hands of a few large corporations.
The emergence of Xlibre and Wayback can be seen as different forms of reaction to this shift. Xlibre represents a desire to actively maintain and develop the traditional X11 server, rejecting the Wayland future and, in its specific case, adding a layer of political defiance. Wayback, on the other hand, accepts the inevitability of Wayland as the underlying display *protocol* but seeks to provide a compatibility layer that preserves the ability to run traditional X11 *environments*, offering a bridge for users and developers who are not ready or willing to abandon their existing setups.
Resistance to Change and the "Salary" Principle
Beyond the high-level philosophical and technical debates, there is a more fundamental human element at play: resistance to change, especially when livelihoods are involved. The original article touches upon this with the quote from Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
This principle applies not only to the historical resistance faced by FOSS advocates when suggesting free alternatives to proprietary software in corporate environments but also within the FOSS community itself. Developers and users who have spent years mastering X11, building tools around it, or simply becoming comfortable with its quirks may naturally resist a transition to Wayland, especially if they perceive it as breaking their workflows or devaluing their expertise. Similarly, those who have built careers around proprietary ecosystems, like the Microsoft stack mentioned in the article, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and may struggle to accept the viability of free alternatives.
The FOSS world, despite its ideals of collaboration and shared knowledge, is not immune to these human factors. The debates around display servers, init systems (like systemd), and even package managers often involve passionate arguments that go beyond technical merit, touching upon comfort zones, established power structures, and perceived threats to existing skill sets and communities.
Conclusion: The Ongoing Struggle for Software's Soul
The current situation with Xlibre, Wayback, X11, and Wayland is a microcosm of the broader political and ideological landscape within FOSS. It demonstrates that the community is not a monolithic entity but a diverse collection of individuals and groups with differing technical preferences, political beliefs, and philosophical commitments regarding software freedom.
The clash between the Free Software and Open Source philosophies continues to shape debates, with one side prioritizing user liberty and the other emphasizing practical development models and corporate adoption. The increasing involvement of large corporations, while providing essential resources, also introduces complex dynamics related to influence, control, and the potential for corporate interests to diverge from community ideals.
The Xlibre fork, with its explicit political stance, has forced a confrontation with the reality that political ideologies, including those from the far right, can and do exist within FOSS. This, in turn, has spurred reactions like the Wayback project, highlighting the community's efforts to navigate these challenges and find technical solutions that align with their values.
Ultimately, the price of software freedom appears to be eternal vigilance and ongoing political engagement. The debates are not just about which display server is technically superior, but about who controls the direction of software development, whose freedoms are prioritized, and what values are embedded in the tools we use daily. As FOSS continues to grow in importance, these political and ideological struggles are likely to intensify, reminding us that the code itself is only one part of the story; the people, their beliefs, and their power dynamics are equally crucial.
The FOSS world, much like any human endeavor involving collaboration, resources, and differing visions for the future, will continue to be a site of political contestation. The goal of software freedom, whether defined by liberty or open collaboration, requires constant negotiation and defense against forces that might seek to undermine its core principles, whether those forces come from proprietary interests or conflicting ideologies within the community itself. ®