Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already).
The modus operandi goes like this:
- Start Wayland (2008)
- Say X is dying
- Get many publishers to repeat that same lie or self-fulfilling prophecy
- Say X is unsafe (even if Wayland has many critical bugs)
- Insist that X uses "old code" and hence it is hard to update/keep alive
- Get the mainstream media to spread that same misleading or false narrative
- Use projects that you control to default to an unsteady Wayland
- Pay the pay-the-say publishers (like ZDNet) to say Wayland is the future, based on the previous step
- Force all users in projects you control (e.g. GTK and GNOME) to swallow Wayland, even if many applications that they use aren't supported or would unexpectedly crash a lot
- Add parts of X to Wayland, then insist it's still Wayland
- Prevent further patching of what the vast majority of people still use
- Say X is dead (even if Wayland depends on many bits of it)
- Ban anyone who wants to keep it alive or says Wayland causes technical problems
- When it's forked by anyone at all, associate this someone's worst views with all forks (present or future)
- Anyone who still insists on using X gets associated with those same (above-mentioned) worst views
- Based on the perceived acceptance of those worst views (implied by still using X), start banning the users, not just the developers
- Insist that X users are "rude" and "unruly", based on the least polite ones
Consider this comment about CoCs:
Of course this comment was downvoted by phoronix.com, which isn't exactly satisfying its original audience and is instead looking for money. It sucks up to GPU companies (they pay!), GAFAM, and IBM.
CentOS is more or less dead (the board members jumped ship), Fedora might be next. IBM might not even care or understand what it lost. The same goes phoronix.com; we need a community voice, not GAFAM narratives. █
