As of late I am deeply conflicted about #GodotEngine 😿
I love the design philosophy; I think it's [one of / the] best libre 3D-capable engine out there. I use it and promote it.
I've learned shocking things about reduz (Juan Linietsky) that made me really sad and I don't trust him in regards to money and power within the project.
I don't want to go into specifics, because it won't fit a toot.
Don't downplay "haters" without evaluating their points.
@unfa While I agree that it's not fine to downplay proper ciriticism, I don't think anyone is obliged to evaluate the points of rude people who throw insults at you - especially when they keep spreading the word of toxic anti-woke spammers like Xrayez.
I don't want to see the open source world become like politics, where the people participating are expected to be completely emotionless and respond calmly to any kind of harassment. I've seen way too much of this in some communities already, and it's not sustainable.
If someone feel they have valid criticism they want to bring up then they should do that without going "GODOT IS WOKE" (Xrayez) and "Juan the great cult leader" (this guy in screenshot above). If I received shit like that on my own projects I'd block/ban instantly without a second thought, because I don't see harassment being a freedom of speech.
And before anyone asks: I'm not saying there aren't problems with Godot's leadership or anything - that's really besides the point here. I just expect people to not harass and spread anti-woke propaganda everywhere. I have no problem at all with not considering criticism coming form people who have called you woke and thrown insults at you.
And I'd recommend you to read through that blog posts he keeps referring to.. It talks about the word "discrimination" being a politically charged word used by the far left, and how woke culture is a threat for code quality.. and how unfair it is for the majorities, who will be called racist/homophobe/etc if they harass a minority but not the other way around..
@matias@unfa the moment someone says "[thing/whatever] is woke" you know this someone is a bigot dumbass. Let's just forget and ignore that Xrayez dude once and for all, that guy is a lunatic who has way too much free time in his hand.
The "this is woke" crowd should just be left on the side, forgotten, let them scream between themselves, because this is what they are, a bunch of bigots and lunatics.
@alfredbaudisch@unfa I couldn't possibly agree more! 👍
It's just so sad to see that other open source devs have to deal with these kind of problems.. There's so much "I can harass and insult you and you HAVE to answer me" bigotry out there..
I make open source myself, but not for gamedev specifically, and users of my projects are in general much more grownup and respectful.
Typical e-mails/issues I receive are like "Hello thanks so much for making this project. It's really great! I have this bug I was running into .. blahblah... Thank you so much again and god bless you and your family, and have a wonderful weekend and rest of your life". 🥰
The most "rude" behaviour I've ever encountered is someone not saying thanks 😅
And then I see open source gamedev projects receiving comments like "WHY IS MY BUG NOT FIXED IT HAS BEEN THREE WEEKS! BTW YOUR CoC IS WOKE" 😠
@unfa@matias oh yeah I'm not saying he got the pass, I was saying that "when making requests, ppl outside open-source gamedev tends to be more nice than ppl making requests for open-source gamedev projects... except Linus, he is not nice". 😛
@matias@alfredbaudisch Oh, I got the "your CoC is woke" accusation too :D Because I have a project account on mastodon.gamedev.place, and their CoC was not just "don't do anything illegal". Apparently being an asshole to people without consequences is a human right.
@alfredbaudisch@unfa But anyway, @unfa I would maybe recommend you to edit the post to add a note about that "cancelgodotengine" hashtag by Xrayez partly being an anti-woke campaign, since you posted that screenshot anyway 😅 I know you didn't know, but it's worth pointing out to avoid sending people into a dark corner of the web.
@matias@alfredbaudisch I didn't know there was this aspect to Xrayez's campaign.
I can't add anything without cutting or abridging something else, and I don't want people to think I am "erasing the truth" because someone has a gun to my head. The less fuel for conpiracies the better.
I could probably add a note to the screenshot though.
@matias Yes, I am trying to separate real meaningful criticism from harrasment (and possibly, sadly even mental decay) seeking some truth that might be hidden there.
When someone harrases me I also try to find some truth in their criticism. I try to assume ignorance/incompetence instead of malice outright. Someone might be terribly incompenet at giving negative feedback constructively, but might have true and valuable observations. Doesn't look like it so far tho.
@unfa If you can do that then you're totally amazing and I really admire that, because I'm not that strong myself 😅 It's definitely a good thing if you can look through harassment and actually search for valid criticism in there, but I wouldn't expect that from anyway tbh. Personally I can easily feel hurt and upset by personal attacks, and therefore prioritise to protect myself by simply blocking harassers.
And then there's also the part of me that doesn't want to let people feel heard when they resort to harassment, especially when they mix their criticism with their own personal antiwoke-campaigns :P
I just don't want the world to be like that.
@matias Yeah, that's a fair stratedgy. I also don't want ot give platform to anyone who is trying to just do damage. And I don't always have the energy to try and extract some useful info from mean comments either. usually ther's just nothing I can get out of that other than a short laugh at how ridiculous people are sometimes.
@unfa Yeah, it can certainly be a waste of time! Though sure, sometimes people have valid points but are just unable to express themselves without doing personal attacks 🙄
I'm just glad I don't work with tech support or something, because these folks have to deal with that every single day haha
I can just expect people to be okay, and ignore them if not - both at home and at work (people are mostly nice at work though!)
@matias To be clear: I very, very rarely need to deal with troublemakers online. For example I moderated and rised my community (chat.unfa.xyz) so that there really are no people who would do any of that. If they'd appear they are educated, warned and then kicked. We reached the last step only a couple times in the better part of a decade (IIRC) that the community has been going for.
@unfa it seems as an open source developer you either get criminally underpaid to the point that you let on a state actor to co-maintain your project, or you get the corpobucks only to be chastised when the development pace doesn't match the orgizational growth 1:1 within the first year.
@jonulrich Yes, it is often a thankless job, with nothing but demands and complaints piling in.
I think every FOSS developer should be taking donations.
Things are a bit different when you're no longer a solo project.
When Godot gets a $500K grant that's said to be used for hiring and then we hear it was consumed by 2 people, one of which was the project lead...
That doesn't look great to me.
Not in a supposedly community-driven project.
Who approves such expenses? It's opaque.
@unfa There are no points there. Only speculations started by a deeply troubled person who spent over a year of daily posting on Twitter with insane conspiracy theories about several project maintainers, myself included.
His rants were very contained, but with the increase in popularity of the engine itself (and the Unity fiasco of 2023) several particular individuals picked up his rants and started to regurgitate them further.
@yurisizov I am not blindly trusting anybody. So far I have always been defending Godot and Juan and I found a lot of the negativity to be unsubstantiated or based on misunderstandings, but I also see some worrying things that I can't explain favorably. And seeing ahow people rising various issues with Godot governance are treated, I feel like even asking for details will get me banned from the community regardless of my history and contributions to the project.
@unfa Well, I'm in a place right now where I have strong negative feelings towards the entire Godot Foundation. But your original post still strikes a very personal chord with me.
These people, the people who spread nonsense about Juan, harassed me for a long time. If you validate them, share what they are saying, you give them power to continue harassing people like myself. It wouldn't matter if they get one thing out of a thousand correct. They should not be allowed a voice.
@yurisizov I'm afraid to ask the specific people because I see how they react to such questions and I don't think I'll learn anything other than "yup, it was a bad idea to ask".
For example what happened to the recently kicked out contributor from Russia? The guy was part of the team for so long...
Or what happened to the person who wrote Godot Physics? I found their comment that they were "bullied two times by different people and each time the management sided with the bully"...
@yurisizov Maybe I will ask directly one day. I'm just worried that I'll be labeled as another conspiracy theorist idiot and expelled.
About the Foundation - I am looking forward to the first financial statement and I am wondering who decides who gets paid for their work and who doesn't in Godot. If it's all open, shouldn't the payroll be open too? I use Open Collective for Liblast and every expense is publicly documented. I don't see legit financial transparency so far, and that's worrying.
@unfa there’s a growing amount of silly hate for it, and a lot of it from the same accounts
Fact is, if you give money to an OSS project, unless there’s strings attached where you sign an agreement for - the people accepting the money can do whatever they want with it. It’s now their money. This is a simple part of foss funding i never understood hate for, it’s their job, the money is then theirs.
@gamingonlinux There's also many past contributors who were bullied and kicked out of the project; many instances of moderation being worse than absent in the community; industry veterans who wanted to help but were treated like idiots; FOSS developers who were open to collab but noped out ( @jrouwe ), there's also reduz's unsubstantiated claims of Godot's supposed tech superiority over industry leading engines. An then there's "borrowing" code from Box2D violating it's license...
@gamingonlinux@unfa
Xrayez isn't helping his own case by spending countless hours on social media replying to random people talking about Godot, branding everyone who disagrees with or doesn't understand his gibberish as a "cultist", writing paragraphs in replies whilst failing to actually provide any solid evidence or arguments outside of "read my book lol" and even listing PROPRIETARY engines as the best alternatives.
If he is being truthful, he's doing an awful job at convincing people.
@gamingonlinux@unfa
I'm fully open to the possibility of Godot's leadership being bad, it happens all the time in FOSS, but after seeing him in countless places and wasting my time reading whatever comments I come across, I just get the vibe that he's either a dedicated troll, socially inept, or mentally ill. I'm not saying he IS any of these, just that his behaviour makes him look like he is, which is bad when you're trying to convince a crowd who love Godot that it's actually poorly managed.
@unfa I was talking about Xrayez in both posts, wasn't throwing shade your way lol.
He's essentially the ring leader in this wave of Godot controversy and wrote the book "Waiting for Blue Robot". Haven't read it myself since he's hasn't exactly done a great job in convincing me it's a good use of my time with the rest of his behaviour.
I just replied to the latest response I saw in this thread, wasn't a direct response to any, I was just throwing my two cents regarding this whole topic.
@Roglozor Thanks. I have heard about this person. Specifically I was notified he used clips of me in his creation. I checked it out and he's taken rhetorical questions I asked and presented them as criticism of Godot, which baffled me. If he scours the internet to find a random interview of me just to twist my words about Godot there - then what kind of content is the rest of the video? Why do something like this, if you have some legit stuff to show? Or maybe you don't? Or maybe you can't tell?
@unfa@gamingonlinux@jrouwe I’ve been pulled into similar controversies (I wrote Chipmunk 2D), and my take has always been “I wrote it so people could use it…” The MIT license has the attribution clause, but when someone has gone and rewritten my code I don’t really consider it the same anymore. They add and remove stuff and make it their own. When they only say it’s “based on Chipmunk” that’s technically in violation of the license, but I guess I don’t really care… Erin is on the Fedi too.
@unfa@gamingonlinux@jrouwe I also read Erin’s presentations back in the 2000’s, and at some point later read (but never directly used) the Box2D lite code. It’s why I use NGS and clamp impulses after accumulating. I credit Erin front and center in my documentation, but don’t otherwise attribute the code. AITA for implementing an algorithm from a presentation because the code was published too? Maybe? You could make a case for that too I suppose.
@slembcke@gamingonlinux@jrouwe I have heard that Box2D code was copied word for word, including comments. I can't find the links to back it up right now...
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