Diseased Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

[AnOminous]

"poor-man's" -> "poor-person's" is brilliant.

I believe "dirt po nigga" is the proper vernacular.

 

[Shaka Brah]

I believe "dirt po nigga" is the proper vernacular.

Can you imagine a github account dedicated to cultural diversity by turning everything into ebonics?

 

[emuemuemu]

Happened a little while ago but our favorite troon to get fired from github has claimed another scalp while we weren't looking.

The openrc project (a systemd alternative used by alpine, devuan, gentoo) has adopted a "CoC based on [Corey's] Contributor Covenant".
Despite the protests of users who downvoted the PR to hell and proposed they should at least use a less insane code of conduct such as Ruby's.
All to no avail.

https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/pull/453 (A)

Spoiler

 

[chiobu]

Some petty slapfight going on or something

https://groups.io/g/simh/topic/new_license/91108560 (A)

https://github.com/simh/simh/blob/master/LICENSE.txt#L36-L64 (A)

 

[Jolyne THICCujoh]

Can someone remind me what CoCs are supposed to do? I know they're attempts at lording over others and power control, but for the average user, how will it really affect them to the point where they HAVE to abide by the rules? And how would anyone find you breaking them?

 

[306h4Ge5eJUJ]

Can someone remind me what CoCs are supposed to do? I know they're attempts at lording over others and power control, but for the average user, how will it really affect them to the point where they HAVE to abide by the rules? And how would anyone find you breaking them?

Nominally they let you sanction Abusive Behavior™, because somehow you can't do that without a document saying so. For the user there isn't much that changes, it's mostly the developers that get targeted so that the usual suspects can take over a successful project.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

Nominally they let you sanction Abusive Behavior™, because somehow you can't do that without a document saying so.

It's more that now you have to. Whereas before you could simply tell the rock-star lead developer to cool it with treating the newbie coders like niggercattle and chill out for a bit before going back to business as usual, now the CoC (for people stupid enough to implement one) pretty much forces you to oust the developer from the project outright with no appeal, lest you and everyone else even tangentially involved come under targeted tranny fire on social media.

But yeah, they do this so they can take over a project. Now it should be a pyrrhic victory since projects that lose their best, most outspoken developers tend to die quickly. But of course the CoC ghouls never cared about the Open Source Software community at all, they just like to destroy people and things.

 

[Churros con Manteca]

Can someone remind me what CoCs are supposed to do? I know they're attempts at lording over others and power control, but for the average user, how will it really affect them to the point where they HAVE to abide by the rules? And how would anyone find you breaking them?

Apart from what was described above they are also aimed at describing methodologies for Conflict Resolution™, but many times after drama appears the CoC, in very mysterious ways, doesn't even stop shit from hitting the fan and sometimes can make matters even worse.

lest you and everyone else even tangentially involved come under targeted tranny fire on social media

This is what proper guidelines and situation handling should avoid the most, but alas, Cuck of Conduct don't.

But yeah, they do this so they can take over a project. Now it should be a pyrrhic victory since projects that lose their best, most outspoken developers tend to die quickly. But of course the CoC ghouls never cared about the Open Source Software community at all, they just like to destroy people and things.

And also let's not forget that, by consequence, it also promotes gatekeeping. If you did a simple slip or you were snarky with someone of the community you are now discarded from working on it.

 

[Hồ Chí Minh]

Some petty slapfight going on or something

View attachment 3300841
View attachment 3300842

https://groups.io/g/simh/topic/new_license/91108560 (A)

https://github.com/simh/simh/blob/master/LICENSE.txt#L36-L64 (A)

So the context here is a disagreement over the "autosize" feature which auto-resizes disks, which Mark Pizzolato thinks should be enabled by default. Many disagree because it writes data to the disk image, even "raw" disks, which causes problems for people in certain use cases (for a long time you couldn't even disable it; now you can but it's still enabled by default).

Someone forked simh to disable or remove this feature. This is kind of the nice thing about open source in the first place: don't like the direction a project is going in? Fork it and do your own thing!

Mark went full sperg mode and changed the license to prevent people from doing this. He seems like a petulant manchild and a right twat.

Basically this entire thing is over what the default setting should be...

See e.g. https://github.com/simh/simh/issues/1059

 

[Frail Snail]

So the context here is a disagreement over the "autosize" feature which auto-resizes disks, which Mark Pizzolato thinks should be enabled by default. Many disagree because it writes data to the disk image, even "raw" disks, which causes problems for people in certain use cases (for a long time you couldn't even disable it; now you can but it's still enabled by default).

Someone forked simh to disable or remove this feature. This is kind of the nice thing about open source in the first place: don't like the direction a project is going in? Fork it and do your own thing!

Mark went full sperg mode and changed the license to prevent people from doing this. He seems like a petulant manchild and a right twat.

Basically this entire thing is over what the default setting should be...

See e.g. https://github.com/simh/simh/issues/1059

This was the post that broke me. I had to re-read that a couple of times to make sure this isn't satire and I'm pretty sure it isn't. The fucking Lorax of emulator devs is here to save the users from themselves. Imagine something less niche, e.g. a PS emulator slapping "THIS IS A PS1 ISO" into your ROM files to "prevent confusion".

 

[DumbDude42]

Can someone remind me what CoCs are supposed to do? I know they're attempts at lording over others and power control, but for the average user, how will it really affect them to the point where they HAVE to abide by the rules? And how would anyone find you breaking them?

in theory, cocs are advertised as social guidelines to help developers from different backgrounds get along better without anyone stepping on anybody elses toes.

in practice, accepting a code of cuckoldry basically means you bend the knee to the ephemeral idea of Social Justice (tm) and submit unconditionally to the judgment of whatever ~marginalized folx~ are (or will in the future be) involved in your project.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

pretty much forces you to oust the developer from the project outright with no appeal

Don't forget to add larger projects sometimes have a CoC board full of petty tyrant idealogues who neither code nor contribute to open source. The people voting to remove may lose nothing by getting rid of a lead dev over non-woke behavior.
Node.js had a failed vote due to one dev voting nay which caused the CoC board to throw a fit and fork Node.js.

---

On a more amusing note, I was going through Calico documentation and noticed the eBPF logo on the Calico page is.... different.
Image uploads aren't working for me right now.

 

[Geranium]

On a more amusing note, I was going through Calico documentation and noticed the eBPF logo on the Calico page is.... different.
Image uploads aren't working for me right now.

Original DTrace ponycorn is less weird, but obviously the weirdos with a MLP fetish got hold of it and it became this:

Infamous Python community nutcase/philosopher, artist, poet, musician, photographer, god’s gift to mankind Kenneth Reitz, last seen scamming $30k, has managed to fuck up requests users again (archive) despite being kicked from the project ages ago.

He also seems to have found someone as mental as he is and had a child (archive), who I can confidentially say is Fucked For Life.

 

[Hồ Chí Minh]

If we want to talk logos, then GNU recutils wins the prize as far as I'm concerned; their logo is a pair of gay turtles fucking.

How do I know they're gay? The FAQ helpfully clarifies it.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Original DTrace ponycorn is less weird, but obviously the weirdos with a MLP fetish got hold of it and it became this:

View attachment 3317477

Infamous Python community nutcase/philosopher, artist, poet, musician, photographer, god’s gift to mankind Kenneth Reitz, last seen scamming $30k, has managed to fuck up requests users again (archive) despite being kicked from the project ages ago.

He also seems to have found someone as mental as he is and had a child (archive), who I can confidentially say is Fucked For Life.

I will never ever use a fucking program who's devs think making My Little Pony OCs for their project is more valuable than actual development.

 

[Nonanalogbeing]

I'm not sure what exactly qualifies as a lol cow but this person regularly bad mouths men but they biologically are one. They always seem to be going off the handle about something that they probably don't understand.

https://mobile.twitter.com/alyssam_infosec

 

[Polock]

An ex-godot contributor (Xrayez) posted a 6500 word manifesto and has been absolutely seething on twitter about getting kicked out of the Godot github repository. From what I can tell, it was because he was trying to push policies that would filter out contributors based on political affiliation and nationality (i.e. REEE RUSSIANS GET OUT). There are rocketchat logs somewhere that prove this but I don't have them at the moment.

How it started:

That Russian member joined Godot community in 2020. I've been contributing to Godot's development for like three years at that time, and Godot's leadership haven't even recognized my effort (I didn't ask to be honest), while it took him only like a year to get full write access to the repository and get special permissions.

You see, I can totally understand why he would think that there's no other choice. He lives in Russia, where Putin's regime does not let him express his opinion about the war, and not the "special military operation", otherwise he'd go in jail. But why this way of thinking has to be spread inside Godot, an open-source, community-driven project? Toxic leaders must be challenged, otherwise those leaders will rule the world of fascism! Am I right?

A person who lives in a fascist country is infected by fascism and spreads it, no matter where that person is located. If you don't believe me, google up "14 signs of fascism" and ask yourself: in what kind of country do you live?

How its going:

If the project manager cared about me, as the only active Ukrainian contributor in Godot, he wouldn't decide to permanently ban an Ukrainian. Is this how they express sympathy and compassion? No. This is a clear example of Putin's rhetoric. Just a blatant lie and hypocrisy. The sympathy that the project manager allegedly expresses is the sympathy of an executioner who raises an ax over the head of an innocent person.

As he spirals into insanity, he sees enemy Russians all around him! Someone named STALIN?? FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

....oh it just turns out that it was just some sponsorship money and literally nothing changed with the project because of a measly $120,000. No, they're not banning Ukranians. They're just banning him specifically.

The seething continues even today, with several tweets dedicated to convincing everyone that the Godot community is, in fact, a cult.

Spoiler: No seriously you guys, its a cult!

Overall very funny sperging.

Smol Dox

Spoiler: The Manifesto - Warning: LONG AND RAMBLING

Hello! I'm a game developer from Ukraine.

I used to be a contributor and even a member of Godot Engine. I have no intention to promote the project here. I wish I knew about Godot's cult community and what it entails.

Warning: The post is very long (40-60 min to read).

Waiting for Godot​

As I've gained experience and kept contributing to Godot, the leadership has invited me to join their organization at GitHub in 2021. This experience allowed me to talk on the topics which pertain to development philosophy, project governance etc.

As I started to identify cornerstones that Godot lacks according to my research, I've started to receive negative responses from the project leaders. My attempts at clarifying the project's development philosophy and governance model were met with a pushback from the leadership, saying to me in private that what I'm trying to do is unacceptable.

The situation started to get worse when I got accused of allegedly quoting developers out of context. This is not true, I see quoting as a professional tool which allows us to identify and merge information in a way to produce useful insights. I may occasionally challenge a person to prove either my or their point, and I always do so explicitly. This is what constitutes an open discussion, the core principle behind Godot as a community-driven project.

Then, I have started to receive private messages from the project manager that what I do is unprofessional. I replied that what I do is always in the interest of a consensus-building process which should not recognize compromises, because compromises lead to temporary coalitions and eventual division of community.

Once I've explained my intention, I haven't received a response, so I kept expressing my opinion, especially when I just exercise the right to freedom of speech!

However, after some months I was excluded from Godot organization. This decision was fairly unexpected. In the email I've received, Godot PLC (project leadership committee) decided that what I say hurts Godot's image. Trying to appeal to this decision was impossible, since they refused to talk about this topic. The way I got treated simply does not warrant member exclusion, especially when I've been contributing to Godot's development for the past five years.

Later on, I started to receive threats of ban from all Godot communities. I find these kinds of threats disproportionate to situations that arise. I no longer felt safe interacting within the Godot community. This affected me to the point where I feared to express my opinion elsewhere as well. It's like the worst possible outcome coming true! I was at the point where I was threatened by the lead developer:

• To restrict myself to only talk about technical topics;
• Do not talk with anyone about my opinion on things that are unrelated to technical topics, including opinion about actions about other community members, opinion about myself (!), opinion about governance...
• Do not cite or quote anyone, for any reason.

Not following these so-called "advices" would lead to an instant ban, as promised by the lead. I decided not to follow these "advices" because I'm fully aware of my human rights. Eventually, they permanently banned me from all Godot community spaces.

After that, I did not ask to remove the ban. What I did, however, is to contact Godot PLC for an request to deliver their official stance and reason for the permanent ban via email, just like all responsible people do. They haven't responded. Zero dialog. Nothing at all. In other words, they cancelled me.

Therefore I decided on the mission to restore justice. The lead developer keeps telling to everyone that if they want to be included in the decision-making process, they must earn his trust. What kind of trust are we talking about here?! For me, all I wanted to do is to improve Godot in the way which benefits most people, and I just wanted to take an active role in the development process freely, regardless of position.

What you've read so far is just a roadmap and the surface of what happened. Now, I'd like to show you why this happened.

Behind the curtains​

Organizations

There exist for-profit organizations where developers are generally not expected to provide feedback regarding its governance. There exist private companies that impose various work restrictions, and people who work there are fine with those restrictions because there are people who are in charge, and there are people who follow orders, do their job, and get money for the job they do (most of the time, otherwise we're talking about slavery).

There also exist not-for-profit organizations, and Godot is such a project governed by Software Freedom Conservancy. Godot is described to be community-driven, free and open source project. Godot declares oneself to have open-minded attitude that attracts various people around the world regardless of experience, culture, without discrimination.

I expect that an open-source and community-driven project with the open discussion principle implies that everything can be discussed freely. I don't ever expect anyone to change the way someone works, but I'm free to influence the decision-making process. If I were in a position of someone who invites people from all around the world, everyone who decided to dedicate their time to work on things on a voluntary basis, I'd say that those people deserve to be treated with respect. Unlike in private companies where people are mostly driven by relationships that involve money, people who participate in not-for-profit organizations are mostly driven by passion. But here comes Godot! (irony)

Governance model

The core problem is that Godot is trying hard to look like a community-driven project, but their actions show a complete disregard of principles such as open discussion if people try to:

• discuss the governance model itself
• discuss the development philosophy (which does not exist, by the way)
• discuss actions of members
• compare Godot to other technologies (which requires making analogies)
• show inconsistencies in the development process (which often requires quoting)

People who bring up those topics may not be immediately banned (most new contributors go through so-called educational process instead, aka brainwashing), but those people get on the radars of community managers in any case. If people are found to be "problematic", they may be labeled as outsiders.

If a contributor is "incapable" of conforming in alignment with existing contributors (in other words, follow a particular ideology), they first try to reproach those people. I have personally received a private message from the project manager, he suggested me to "stop quoting people", and presented it as a potential violation of Code of Conduct. However, nothing in CoC stated this, especially if we take this together with the open discussion principle. In fact, they break their own CoC because it clearly states: "Always assume positive intent from others.", unfortunately, they don't. This is a clear example of witch-hunting.

Later on I've received an email from Godot PLC. Here's one of the most interesting parts:

We think this attitude shows a bad image of the Godot project when a contributor who is part of the GitHub organization (thus with the "Member" badge) is seen arguing with other Members and at times overruling their positions.

It means that:

• they are afraid that someone will think bad of them, as if an opinion of a single person could destroy the entire project;
• due to this, they tried to shut me up by giving a "Member" badge, but as I said, I wasn't actually interested in any of that;
• because giving a "Member" badge didn't stop me from talking on topics related to, say, development philosophy, they just decided to take it away:

We decided to remove you from the organization for now. The "Member" distinction bears a lot of weight, and is thus also a responsibility to be a good representative of the project.

This defensiveness clearly shows signs of what we call a cult and tribalism. Successful and mature projects rarely if ever have to defend their image (other than protecting trademarks), because strong and sustainable image is built by making good quality products instead. It's less about words, it's about concrete actions. In the IT industry, this means building robust and useful software.

Another interesting thing from email:

We do think that you are well-intentioned, and we understand that you struggle with mental health [emphasis mine]. But you also seem to be well conscious of your issues, and we think that you can continue to grow alongside the Godot project and better understand what kind of interactions are good, and what kind are harmful.

Perhaps my example may sound extreme, but this reminds me of Soviet Union, where political reformers were labelled to have "sluggish schizophrenia", as a method to oppress the opposition. This is just an analogy, my point is that cults also employ similar methods to further ostracize non-believers. In fact, Godot leadership may convince you otherwise just to discredit what I'm saying. That is, I've also experienced outright defamation of my persona by Godot followers.

The process of decision-making was originally described as meritocracy. Then do-ocracy, as constantly regurgitated by the lead. Finally, they've come up with the most accurate way to describe it: trustocracy!.

The thing is that, "to be trusted" was never my intention. But touching the topic of governance will eventually lead to a situation where you'll be seen as a threat to the Godot cult!

Victimhood of Godot cult​

Participating in an open-source community grants a feeling of belonging. You do the right thing and make the world better! The problem is that this can become addictive. This experience has lead to a situation where I got attached to the project, which is certainly a bad thing.

Coincidentally, the Godot community jokingly describes this form of addiction as "Godotitis". But I tell you, this is a serious condition! If you find yourself suffering from "Godotitis", I suggest you to turn off the Internet for some time!

This is no joke! It's merely a defense mechanism when they start to joke about cultish community inside Godot, because if this is taken serious, more people would start noticing that something fishy is going on.

There are numerous reasons why I decided and kept to participate in the Godot community. That includes:

• get experience with game development and open-source development;
• get a feeling of belonging;
• get an engine for free!

Nonetheless, I've become a follower of Godot cult. I used dislike everyone who was presenting their engine instead of Godot, or who was criticizing Godot. I used to think that those people are so stubborn to learn GDScript because they are used to their old tools and because of that, they're not willing to change or give a chance to try something new.

I thought that:

• everyone who said "Godot is a cult" are just jealous of the engine, because those who are against Godot are just angry people;
• Godot is the ultimate game engine out there and it's going to become "the next big thing", we just have to wait a little bit;
• it would be nice if Godot could become the only open-source game engine out there so that people could finally build a single ecosystem of tools and plugins.

I totally realize that this thinking looks naïve now, but that's exactly what I used to think. The cult is so heavily ingrained in the Godot community that they make fun of it:

One of us, one of us
You're part of the cult now.
Hell yeah I'm a cultist now.

Along the jokes about Godot cult, I've noticed an interesting pattern. People who joke about it inside Godot circles express feelings of:

• tiredness: "Oh, there's still so much work to do in Godot, I need some rest";
• frustration: "Damn, I've been hunting for that nasty bug all night and still cannot fix it";
• apology: "Hey, sorry folks, I'm really doing my best here, but I need some time to figure this out, I hope it's okay";

Godot leadership replies:

• "Sure, take a rest, you already did a great job. Good work!"
• "Please don't stress yourself. If you cannot fix the bug, someone else will do."
• "We do not force you to do anything. We're thankful for the work you do in Godot! Your work is really valuable for us!"

If you've seen merged pull requests in Godot by the project manager, you'll see "Thanks!" posts for every pull request. And this appears like a normal thing. But when something is repeated multiple times without any personal touch, it loses its genuine expression of gratitude. And I have to say that this is what got me addicted to contributing to Godot's development at first. But occasionally, when the project manager merged some of my pull requests, he wouldn't say "Thanks!". Why? That was the time when he removed my privileges in Godot!

Here's another example. From a news article:

To all of you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You are the fuel [emphasis mine] of this project and there aren't words to express how much that means to Godot.

So, if you do get a "Thank you" in Godot, that's just hypocrisy and a form of manipulation. If you're labeled as an outsider, then even your work becomes suspicious to them. Once the project manager figured that I'm leaning towards an outsider, all this façade of gratitude falls apart. Eventually, he started to ignore most of my proposals and pull requests.

They exploit people's desire of belonging to a group, create an environment where people get to work for free, all in the interest for their project. A lot of work that is done by contributors creates the visibility of an actively developed project, so that sponsors know that they spend money on something worthy. But you'll see a lot of commits in Godot that have nothing to do with bug fixing or feature development. That includes:

• code style changes
• typo fixes
• code formatting

This is also the reason why Godot tends to attract beginners more than experienced professionals. There was an effort by an individual who managed to greatly improve the engine's performance:

• Using the slowest data structure almost every time

The lead developer has closed the discussion and said:

I don't think it's the right way to contribute or help.
...
I obviously welcome very much your feedback once I'm done with my work, but all you are doing now is beating a dead horse, so just chill for a while.

Since then, I haven't seen the author working on anything related to Godot. The Godot leadership simply does not want professionals to work on the engine, because according to so-called "do-ocracy" as stated by Godot's lead developer, developers should eventually take responsibility and privilege to make final decisions as maintainers. But as you'll see later, it's not do-ocracy, it's trustocracy!

The problem is that if the project is driven by a group of leaders, and when that group got attached to it on the personal level, the product ceases being a tool and turns into an object to be protected. Any external cause brought in by an outsider that hasn't been approved into the inner circle can be turned away simply because that person is not a part of the circle. "He's trying to overrule the project" - they say.

When you stumble upon a bug in Godot, you just think: "Hey, that's not a big deal, lets write a bug report and this eventually gets fixed". The keyword here is eventually. Some bugs never gets fixed, and before you know it, Godot developers start to work on a new major version. They say: "It's a waste of time to fix those bugs, because everything will be rewritten from scratch anyways". And that's exactly what they do! Bugs keep accumulating, and regressions become more frequent even with the unit testing framework in place that I helped to set up myself a year ago. Eventually, you get used to existing bugs and/or pretend that they don't exist, or think bugs are not so critical to the workflow etc. You get to think just like the leader and their followers.

The brainwashing in Godot becomes obvious if you read articles such as this one:

• As an Open Source project, Godot is more than a game engine

The lead developer expressed the desire that he'd like to leave Godot development and start community management at some point in future. Why? Because spreading the word of Godot is more important than fixing bugs!

Escaping the Godot cult​

Hello, my name is u/Xrayez, and I'm addicted to Godot.

The first step for me was to realize that I have a problem. It took me years to realize this. In fact, I realized this as soon as leaders started to ostracize me from the project. I think most people that stumbled upon this in Godot would decide to leave the community on their own (and that's exactly what Godot leadership does, they first point to a door). But I decided to stay, because:

• I cannot let a group of people employ abusive tactics. I exercise my right to freedom of speech after all;
• l decided to learn how to deal with toxic leaders once I recognized them (for the past two years), since the situation led me to study psychology.

I'd also say that the war allowed me to see everything crystal clear. The war breaks illusions. Talking about Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was actually the cause that lead to my permanent ban in Godot as well...

The war is on

On 24 February 2022 at approximately 4:30 AM, I've heard really loud explosions. My heart started to beat like hell with each explosion. Later in the morning, I turned on my PC and I saw the news. I contacted my friends online, and of course entered the Godot chat to notify the community about this event.

I said: "Russia started to bombard Ukraine. I live in Ukraine. Stay strong fellows." I did not mention anyone specifically. Almost immediately, the project manager reacted to my message, saying: "I hope you and your loved ones stay safe. This is such a horrifying situation, there's no words".

Of course, "there's no words". He just wanted to save his face in the situation where he just kicked me from Godot months ago. The fact that the project manager was the first one who replied to my message within seconds means that he put myself in the watchlist in order to surveil my every action in Godot, I was already on their radar.

Several weeks later, Bucha massacre happened. I lived 30 km away, and when the battle for Kyiv was over, I decided to visit that place. I saw everything with my own eyes.

My mind was so focused on the war and survival that I stopped interacting with Godot community. I realized that my life is more important than just being part of something. But at some point I decided to contact the lead developer to express all my feelings and my relationship with Godot. I already knew that the lead developer is a skillful gaslighter, though.

I started my conversation with him on this topic:

• Promote development of extensions for Godot

Essentially, I wanted to let him know that if they don't welcome me within the Godot community, perhaps they would be interested in cooperating, and I'd lead another project, so that most useful unmerged and rejected features could have their place somewhere. His reply was expected:

There is zero incentive from the Godot project to promote features that were not merged (yet or ever). I'm pretty surprised about your perseverance on this topic for so long. I think I already made it clear that we will not recognize your project nor allow you to do strong promotion of it using our own resources. I have no idea why you believe you can convince me or "find a way or a backdoor" into this. You will not find any no matter how hard you try.

Again, so defensive, little respect. I said to him that if he doesn't want to discuss this topic, I asked him to let me know about it, and to be honest, the reason why I kept talking about this topic for so long with him was because I was in a bomb shelter, so I decided to at least distract myself, and I told him about this. He said:

I can imagine its hard and you have my support.

I asked:

What kind of support are you talking about?

He said:

I mean that I totally understand the situation you are in, and that it can be very stressing, and that you are a victim in all that is going on. I don't think there is a lot I can do for you specifically [emphasis mine], but I meant to say that I fully believe what you are going through is real

Then I told him that I've already figured this out! Also, I don't need an external confirmation that what I see is real, as I see the war with my own eyes. That wasn't helpful.

Then for some reason he started to explain why they haven't banned me so far, and that I should be thankful that I still keep interacting in the Godot community. He said: "if you cross the line you cross the line and we won't be able to protect you".

I have found his rhetoric quite disrespectful, and when considered with other reprehensible behavior of the lead developer in Godot, and in the context of war that we've been talking about, I couldn't resist to compare his own rhetoric to Putin's one! Then he said:

The project is fine without you, it does not need you attacking the leadership to try to change things and just like nobody backs Putin in Ukraine, nobody backs your point of view within Godot
So really, don't do these stupid comparisons when it's obviously the opposite for you

What he said to me was problematic on so many levels!

1. All I wanted to do is to be able to freely share my opinion. I feel sympathy for people who had to go through the proposal process, make a pull request for the feature, and get rejected. So I wanted to find a way to help those people find a place. The Godot leadership could avoid all problems by literally leaving me alone with my thoughts that I published publicly, or they could choose to just ignore me.
2. There exist numerous people who back up my point of view. So it's just a blatant lie. See for instance the development philosophy proposal.
3. I advocate for open discussion, the principle that Godot publicly declares on their website. If I'm restricted in the way I must speak, then that's not what constitutes an open discussion.
4. They constantly say that I "create unrest" in the community by participating it. But the thing is that Godot leadership must not forget that the so called "organization" they created (it doesn't even exist legally) has entered the democratic world. Godot is not the center of the world!

Due to this, I got an impression that Godot's governance is moving towards petty tyranny (see "trustocracy" definition above). And if they choose to go this route, they will end up as benevolent dictators. And of course, they will not like what I say about them. Incidentally, the entire Godot community reminds me of Orwell's "1984"! "How dare you think badly of Godot"! Recall the "Thinkpol"? I'm just a dissident and an extremist in the eyes of Godot leadership! I have absolutely no power other than being able to influence people with words.

So, their structure of logical reasoning comprises mostly of manipulation. This kind of reasoning may be interpreted as a powerful charisma, unfortunately. Putin also presented himself as a quite charismatic and a loving person to the entire world, until he decided to attack Ukraine... The problem is that Putin is still seen as a hero by some... That's how powerful brainwashing could get.

Later on, I said to him that my behavior is the behavior of a free person, and he does not have any right to restrict my way of expression. I also mentioned that this kind of attitude is an inherent trait of a lot of Ukrainians, due to our culture and mentality. Then he said:

This has nothing to do with Ukrainians, this only has to do with you
Don't shield yourself in people who are suffering
If you behave in an unacceptable way, it's about you, not about Ukrainians.
You don't represent Ukrainians to me. [emphasis mine]

I thought: "Wow...". I hope you understand what he said was unacceptable:

1. I am suffering from the war.
2. I am an Ukrainian, a citizen of Ukraine, have an Ukrainian passport, and even authentic Ukrainian surname. I'm a Cossack descendant!
3. Even if we assume for a moment that I'm an ass, he still has no right to deny my national identity.

A year ago, the lead developer said to me:

not pissing others off is more important than trying to understand others

But he failed not to piss me off!

From that moment on, I decided that I'd never contribute to Godot again. However, due to my addiction to Godot, I've found various excuses to continue using the product.

Russians and their influence on Godot leadership

Disclaimer: I'm not against Russians specifically. I'm against everyone who kills people of Ukraine, and I'm against everyone who justifies action or inaction of Russian citizens that keep supporting Putin's regime. It just happens that the majority of people who live in Russia do support the atrocities that happen in Ukraine now, and some Russians around the world infect other people with fascism propaganda. I know this as an Ukrainian.

There exists one Russian member in Godot. He's very stubborn, immediately shuts everything you say down. He also goes on rants and lengthy discussions to prove you wrong. He harassed me and others in various Godot communities. When I said anything that he interpreted as offensive, he would report on me to the project manager or lead developer, and I'd get cyberbullied: "You cannot do this. If you keep doing it, you'll get banned". But when I explained how his behavior is problematic, the project manager would say: "I don't see nothing wrong with what he says or does. I realize that he can be a little confrontational, but he can say 'fuck all who think otherwise' if this is done in good faith".

That Russian member joined Godot community in 2020. I've been contributing to Godot's development for like three years at that time, and Godot's leadership haven't even recognized my effort (I didn't ask to be honest), while it took him only like a year to get full write access to the repository and get special permissions.

My point is that he was accepted into the inner Godot cult with ease! His offensive attitude to people allowed him to do this! By offensive I also mean defensive, since he worked hard to spread the word of Godot and shut down everyone who "spread misinformation about Godot", according to his words.

The project manager has recognized that the Russian guy and me "seem to have frequent tensions", so he suggested me to contact him via PM. So I did.

To summarize, the Russian guy ended up blaming me that "I'm the cause of all conflicts, and he wondered why", basically repeating the same slander that he likely heard about me in a private #advisors channel at Godot Contributors Chat.

The most interesting part was his last words. He said (translated from Russian):

And don't speak to me using "Mr.", we're not in Verkhovna Rada [emphasis mine].

FYI, Verkhovna Rada in Ukraine is equivalent to the United States Congress in USA. What kind of insinuation is this? Well, he was perfectly aware of existing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and that I'm an Ukrainian . Why would he find it absolutely necessary to touch politics? That was 2021.

He changed his nickname right after Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I didn't realize why, but according to his Twitter, he said that he doesn't want to be associated with the war. Turns out that, if you read his old nickname in Russian (interpreting Latin symbols as Cyrillic), this literally means: Russian Warrior! A lot of questions, so I kept researching.

I've stumbled upon a news article (2021):

• Godot Engine receives $120,000 grant from game development studio Kefir

Kefir is a Russian game development studio. Everything seemed to be fine, until I read the quote presented there. The author of that quote is Alyosha Stalin - Chief Business Development Officer at Kefir. Here's an explanation of the name:

• Stalin is a Soviet political leader and dictator who caused massive genocide called "Holodomor" of Ukrainian people.
• "Stalin" is not a Russian surname. It's a pseudonym for "Man of Steel", similarly to "Lenin".
• "Alyosha" is just a byname of the full name "Alexey".

This means that Godot has accepted a donation from someone who adores Stalin. Does that mean that Russian guy is from Kefir as well? I don't know.

My point is that Godot appears to attract Russian game developers. Why? Because they likely share the governance model of Godot and find it as a perfect environment where their behavior can be tolerated, and where their behavior could even thrive!

Climax​

My final day at Godot was at the moment when I watched a video by our Ukrainian spokesperson Oleksii Goncharenko. I shared the video at #coffee-break channel at Godot Contributors Chat, and presented it as an example of free opinion voicing.

Some minutes ago, someone from Godot members said:

Well, the main conclusion I seem to draw is that you are trying to make a connection with your exclusion from the [Godot] org with things that are quite different and an order of magnitude more impactful. I think it's a quite an unfortunate comparison, which, in a way, kind of make the point of the [Godot] PLC decision [Xrayez comment: to remove my membership in Godot]

Do you see how they refuse to accept any kind of analogies? This kind of manipulation technique allows them to sustain the current status quo, and this allows to defend their cult from the outside intervention. This way of thinking is apparent when the lead developer asks that people should not compare Godot to any other technology, which is ridiculous considering that people do this all the time. That's how we learn as well!

Our conversation quickly switched to the topic of human rights, and I've explained how Godot violates my right to freedom of speech (reminder: they forbidden me to quote anyone, under any circumstance, I'm not allowed to talk about other members and even myself).

Then that Russian guy I've been describing here appeared! He said:

I have to say that anyone's involvement with the project is not a part of any free speech paradigm [emphasis mine]. Anyone can be directly (by a personal "firing") or indirectly (via the established and agreed upon terms of engagement that make you quit [emphasis mine]) removed from the project, at least in the official capacity. There is no inherent right to contribute to Godot, so the org can oust anybody for its arbitrary reasons [emphasis mine].

Again, the Russian guy is the official member within Godot organization, accepted by Godot PLC. The leadership agrees to what he says. Why what he said is problematic:

• the right to freedom of speech is seen as some kind of disadvantage (to whom?);
• there exist procedures that "make you quit" on your own in Godot (cyberbullying, pointing to the door, boycotting, cancelling... you name it);
• everyone should feel welcomed to contribute to the project right from the start, so people do have inherent right to contribute to Godot;
• people can be booted from the project for any reason (!)

Therefore, the approach described by the Russian is fairly unprofessional, no healthy open source organization would do any of those things.

He continued saying:

We just choose to trust [emphasis mine] that those reasons are valid and are upheld in the interest of the larger community.
...
Every work is based on trust [emphasis mine], and hard as you might, trust [emphasis mine] may just disappear one day, or never appear in the first place.

Again, do you see how they keep fixating on trust?

After my long reply regarding the Godot's principle of open discussion and democratic world and the human rights that represent the democratic world, the Russian guy replied:

Godot is open-source, but it's not just anyone's. There are specific leaders. You either align with them or not [emphasis mine].

I replied:

What can you expect from a person who lives in Russia...

You see, I can totally understand why he would think that there's no other choice. He lives in Russia, where Putin's regime does not let him express his opinion about the war, and not the "special military operation", otherwise he'd go in jail. But why this way of thinking has to be spread inside Godot, an open-source, community-driven project? Toxic leaders must be challenged, otherwise those leaders will rule the world of fascism! Am I right?

He said:

I am very much anti establishment
But Godot isn't a country

Later on I explained to him a one important thing to realize. I said:

A person who lives in a fascist country is infected by fascism and spreads it, no matter where that person is located. If you don't believe me, google up "14 signs of fascism" and ask yourself: in what kind of country do you live?

You can verify this for yourself if you read the book called "Pandemic fascism".

They thought that I'd like to establish a democratic way of organization in Godot. But I wasn't implying that. Most open-source projects are based on meritocracy indeed. When I talk about democracy, I meant that if you enter a democratic world, you must abide to democratic principles on the level of basic human rights.

Then one of the members said:

lol, and what exact right did we remove you? Free speech? You are still talking here. And no one prevents you from bringing your opinion on twitter or else tbh
But even then, free speech does not apply here [emphasis mine], and I really hope it will never do.

Later on, another member said:

Note, people are not getting removed/banned because others wake up with the wrong foot one day. This just means that CoC is a guideline and if people are found to be disruptive to the development/community they may be removed even if they didn't explicitly breach one of the rules in the CoC [emphasis mine].

This is called permissiveness and iniquity. It means that the leadership of Godot allow themselves to do whatever they want with people, however they want it. This is also the moment when they figured that their governance model is trustocratic!

Apparently, the Russian guy got offended by what I said. He didn't tell me this, but all of a sudden, Godot's project manager appeared! He said:

It's the second time today you're overtly racist Xrayez. This has to stop.

At first, he accused me of racism. Then, other member suggested another term: xenophobia. The project manager agreed that: "Maybe better term yes."

Or "extremism", as Maria Zakharova says.

They couldn't come up with a specific accusation because they didn't really care at this point. There was no genuine explanation or proof of accusation. Zero dialogue.

Moments later, the project manager said:

I give up trying to reason with you. We can't reach an agreement on how to work together, so we shouldn't work together. You don't want to make things work, and you don't want to leave [emphasis mine], so the only option left for us is to ban you from Godot communities.
That saddens me because I estimate you as a person and I'm appalled by the situation you're in your real life, but we can't help you [emphasis mine].

Ask yourself: if you were to manage an international project, knowing that there exist both Russian and Ukrainian contributors, and knowing that Russia is the aggressor that caused literal genocide of people in Ukraine (both in the past and now), what would you do in a situation like this as a project manager?

If the project manager cared about me, as the only active Ukrainian contributor in Godot, he wouldn't decide to permanently ban an Ukrainian. Is this how they express sympathy and compassion? No. This is a clear example of Putin's rhetoric. Just a blatant lie and hypocrisy. The sympathy that the project manager allegedly expresses is the sympathy of an executioner who raises an ax over the head of an innocent person.

When I got permanently banned for real, do you know what I felt?

Freedom!

Epilogue​

I strongly assert that Godot does not follow the principle of open discussion despite appearances. Talking about governance, decisions, and questioning actions of members is heavily frowned upon, and people get punished for that. I decided to raise awareness of this problem, so that people will not fall victim to the trap called Godot, which is driven more by hype rather than a clear goal. Which quite unfortunate, because Godot could become a great project, like Blender.

As an ex-developer and a cult survivor, I say that Godot is one of the biggest cults in the open-source gamedev industry that exploit people's desire of belonging to a group. Whether the decisions of Godot's leadership are conscious is irrelevant. People end up spending their lives working on a project with no vision and get permanently banned from the project when they try to challenge the toxic leadership once they get more experience, while a project keeps receiving donations from sponsors that also get deluded. Just look at what "Godot#History)" means in the first place:

the name "Godot" was chosen due to its relation to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, as it represents the never-ending wish of adding new features in the engine, which would get it closer to an exhaustive product, but never will [emphasis mine].

Godot's defensiveness and abusive relationship has lead to a situation that I had to write this post, to the point that I had to create the #CancelGodotEngine movement. If they keep abuse and manipulate contributors for their own benefit, I will do everything within my strength to at least raise awareness of the problem.

I have learnt that you cannot get something for free, nothing is free. if you don't pay with money, you pay with your time, work and sacrificing life in general.

I have all the proofs. People contact me and share their testimonies on how they got treated in Godot. If you're such a person, feel free to PM me. Ask me anything!

 

[Knight of the Rope]

https://github.com/Xrayez

This guy needs to lay off the soy.

 

[quaawaa]

An ex-godot contributor (Xrayez) posted a 6500 word manifesto and has been absolutely seething on twitter about getting kicked out of the Godot github repository. From what I can tell, it was because he was trying to push policies that would filter out contributors based on political affiliation and nationality (i.e. REEE RUSSIANS GET OUT). There are rocketchat logs somewhere that prove this but I don't have them at the moment.

He spammed his manifesto on Reddit but his post was removed from both /r/gamedev and /r/opensource:


He doesn’t look like much of a contributor:

Only 157 pull requests over five years. I don’t know any major project that would grant someone write access with a commit rate that low.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

Wrong thread? Did you mean to post this in Open Source Software Community?

Might be worthy of a cross-post there sure, but it's the Ukrainian guy that @Polock mentioned above. I would've quoted but the post is too long and the button is missing.