The "suckless" edit war

[Bbb23sucks]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suckless.org

At first, nothing seems wrong, just a typical (semi-)stub. But if you check the talk page and history you'll find that there has been a multi-year edit war over claimed ties to neo-Nazis.

[ericbarbour]

It started with the claim by an IP address in June 2019. Much stupidity ensued---barely noticed elsewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =901707601

Far as I can tell, Suckless members accused someone of being "cultural Marxists", and that started the accusations of "neo-nazism". All based on forum and Twitter posts and other "questionable references". Have to admit I've seen some of the worst leftists try to attack people they disagree with of being "Nazis". It's a cheap shot and certain terminally-online assholes will keep trying it. Not that members of the right haven't tried similar tactics. Doesn't lead to "encyclopedia content" no matter who tries the shot.

[Bbb23sucks]

Doesn't lead to "encyclopedia content" no matter who tries the shot.

The only winners in edit wars are the patrollers, admins, and arbitrators who enforce the rulings and block their enemies. I'm actually surprised that they effectively endorsed Suckless in this case, considering how quickly Wikipedians usually jump to accusing each other.

Far as I can tell, Suckless members accused someone of being "cultural Marxists"

I think that was a side accusation. From my understanding - from reading the Wikipedia thread, but some threads on Reddit - is that the main accusation was over a torch walk held by Suckless that was also (supposedly?) attended by a Nazi or at the same time as a different torch walk by Nazis (I found conflicting information on both of those).

[journo]

There's a suckless community?

Their mailing lists have only had a few messages in the last year. No news items this year. Cannot find any active chatrooms.

It's a few simple code repositories with random people submitting patches. It never seems to have been particularly active or cohesive. If it was ever a community, maybe it was in IRC for a short time in 2007 or something lol.

The most prominent new stuff I could find with a similar philosophy was Michae Forney's stuff. And it's not even hosted on the suckless website.

[Bbb23sucks]

Their mailing lists have only had a few messages in the last year. No news items this year. Cannot find any active chatrooms.

I thought they were much more active than that. Link?

The subreddit is fairly active: https://old.reddit.com/r/suckless

It's a few simple code repositories with random people submitting patches. It never seems to have been particularly active or cohesive. If it was ever a community, maybe it was in IRC for a few years in 2007 or something lol.

Well it is a real organization, based in Germany. They have physical meetups. Plus I'd say it extends far beyond that as a concept.

The most prominent new stuff I could find with a similar philosophy was Matt Fourney's stuff. And it's not even hosted on the suckless website.

I haven't heard of that. Could you tell me more?

[journo]

Well it is a real organization, based in Germany. They have physical meetups. Plus I'd say it extends far beyond that as a concept.

Have they had any recently? Seemingly all their prominent software is 13 year old software authored by Anselm. That subreddit just seems like a place for people who have used the software to leave comments, I don't see much of a community. There's not much evidence it's a part of Suckless either as they'd presumably be against Reddit for many reasons.

The most prominent new stuff I could find with a similar philosophy was Matt Fourney's stuff. And it's not even hosted on the suckless website.

I haven't heard of that. Could you tell me more?

Sorry his name is Michael Forney.

Saw his name in the mailing lists. Was briefly researching suckless a year ago or so. He seems to be the only person who tried to continue the original philosophy. For example, Stali was a suckless project by Anselm to make a small, statically linked OS
https://sta.li/

It's defunct

Michael continued the idea with Oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis, which is still maintained, it's not linked on the suckless website

DWM is maybe the most notable suckless (aka Anselm) project. It uses xorg, which is dying, insecure, and being phased out. Michael made something similar for Wayland instead of xorg https://github.com/michaelforney/velox

Michael even has a few active chat rooms, more busy than suckless it seems, but still pretty much barren. Where suckless was more or less was a late 2000s project by Anselm, Michael's projects seem early 2010s projects

[Bbb23sucks]

Have they had any recently? Seemingly all their prominent software is 13 year old software by authored by Anselm.

No. But supposedly only due to covid. https://suckless.org/conferences/2020/

Saw his name in the mailing lists. Was briefly researching suckless a year ago or so. He seems to be the only person who tried to continue the original philosophy. For example, Stali was a suckless project by Anselm to make a small, statically linked OS
https://sta.li/

It's defunct

Michael continued the idea with Oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis, which is still maintained, it's not linked on the suckless website

I've heard of those, just not his name.

DWM is maybe the most notable suckless (aka Anselm) project. It uses xorg, which is dying, insecure, and being phased out. Michael made something similar for Wayland instead of xorg https://github.com/michaelforney/velox

Why not just use dwl? https://github.com/djpohly/dwl

[journo]

Why not just use dwl? https://github.com/djpohly/dwl

Yea, you can. I don't use suckless or suckless derived stuff except to learn programming.

Notably, DWL is also not on the suckless website.

My only point was suckless doesn't seem like a community, and if it ever was my guess is it phased out many years ago, over a decade before the alleged drama in the OP. I guess it has some fanboys, but that's just part of the general consumer culture of anything linux adjacent.

[ericbarbour]

My only point was suckless doesn't seem like a community, and if it ever was my guess is it phased out many years ago, over a decade before the alleged drama in the OP. I guess it has some fanboys, but that's just part of the general consumer culture of anything linux adjacent.

If it were a "community", trust me, it would be dominated by neckbeard manchildren. If not entirely composed of them. And they would almost certainly have some kind of "indoctrination ceremony", which inevitably includes hazing and abuse. Even the groups that were originally started as a joke.

The Proud Boys say they have an initiation process that has four stages and includes hazing. The first stage is a loyalty oath, on the order of "I'm a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world"; the second is getting punched until the person recites pop culture trivia, such as the names of five breakfast cereals; the third is getting a tattoo[26] and agreeing to not masturbate; and the fourth is getting into a major fight "for the cause".[23][75][76][77][78][79] The masturbation policy was later modified to read: "no heterosexual brother of the Fraternity shall masturbate more than one time in any calendar month" and "all members shall abstain from pornography".[80]

[journo]

As far as I can tell the accusations are directed at two random Suckless contributors. The only thing that could potentially implicate the suckless website is the German tiki torch photo in their photos section

this is what someone said on ycombinator about that

I've done many torchwalks with scouts. In fact, they're used to celebrate the end of the Nazi occupation in my home town every single year on Sept 18th. Should we stop doing this because some yahoos on the other side of the world used some torches in some far-right march? This is "Hitler has a moustache, you have a moustache, ergo you must be a Nazi"-kind of logic.

Suckless is an Anselm project. I'm not aware of Anselm being a Nazi, nor do I care much given the project is more or less defunct outside a Unicode string library.