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This file briefly documents the events surrounding the fork of Xorg into XLibre without any commentary. It will be referenced by the README.md. Part-of: X11Libre/misc/issues/148 Signed-off-by: callmetango <callmetango@users.noreply.github.com>
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History of the XLibre fork
This file contains a brief historical overview of the events surrounding the fork of Xorg into XLibre. It includes copies of the original unmodified documents, including references to their sources, so that readers can form their own opinions.
The only two changes made were to reduce the original heading levels to improve readability and, where necessary, to add headings and short introductions to provide factual and chronological context. Spelling errors have been retained.
Message of metux sent to the X.org mailing list
This is the e-mail sent from Enrico Weigelt alias metux to the X.org mailing list hosted at freedesktop.org on June 6, 2025.
History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days
Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult info at metux.net
Fri Jun 6 13:50:32 UTC 2025
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Hello everybody,
this morning, Redhat employees banned me from the freedesktop.org gitlab infrastructure - so censored all my work (not just on Xorg). They killed my account, my git repos, my tickets in Xorg and closed all my merge requests. And then making fun on social media about it.
They fired the shot that's heared around the world.
So much for freedesktop.org being "independent" and embracing freedom. Perhaps we should nominate them for the next Orwell award.
It's now clear that freedesktop.org is the Redskirts, and they want to kill X. By the way, the same corporation that tied to proprietarize a lot of FOSS code, including the Linux kernel (and I've been one of those who warned them about terminating our license grants them).
My most evil heresies probably were:
a) forking Xorg and making actual progress
b) talking to a journalist whose name must not be spoken in many other
Redhat/IBM tax evasion outlets, like GNOME (they're also banning
honorable long time contributors for just mentioning that name)
c) inviting anybody to join me, without discrimination
I don't know why, but it really looks they're quite scared by one guy that's just trying to actually bring X11 forward. Hard to find he right words for telling how honored I'm about that.
This didn't actually surprise me, I knew this would be coming for about a year now. Just didn't expect them to do such an extremely irrational and dumb move. Now I'm taking great pleasure seeing the Streisand effect kicking in (my inbox is exploding). Thanks for that great publicity.
It's not the first time this happens in FOSS world, and it's not the first time it's happening in X: remember what Xfree86 board did to the honorable Keith Packard, back about two decades ago - what lead to the birth of Xorg and the death of Xfree86. Same is happening again.
History repeats itself.
And now the Redskirts placed me onto the same stage as the great honorable Keith Packard. WOOOOW.
Just to be clear, I didn't want to fork, I tried my best to work together with the Xorg team. But I knew for long time, this day would come. Xorg has been captured by Redhat, in order to get rid of destroy competition. The necessary consequence is a fork, more competition.
For those interested in bringing X forward, feel free to join the mailing list:
https://www.freelists.org/list/xlibre
Git repo:
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver.git
I'm expecting to be banned from whole freedesktop.org mail system, too. Excommunication unfortunately had become a common thing in the so-called "free software" world - GNOME is just one of many examples. So if you don't hear anymore from me on freedesktop.org lists, you know what's going on.
Join the xlibre mailing list to stay tuned.
Together, we'll make X great again.
have fun,
--mtx
--
--- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
info at metux.net -- +49-151-27565287
Source: History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org - Xlibre fork release coming in few days
First version of the README of XLibre at Github
The first version of the XLibre-specific README.md file was created on June 12, 2025, and updated throughout the day. The version below reflects the status at the end of June 12, 2025.
XLibre Xserver
Xlibre is a fork of the Xorg Xserver, with lots of code cleanups and enhanced functionality.
This fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from BigTech, are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to eliminate competition of their own products. Classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics.
Right after journalists first began covering the planned fork Xlibre, on June 6th 2025, Redhat employees started a purge on the Xlibre founder's GitLab account on freedesktop.org: deleted the git repo, tickets, merge requests, etc, and so fired the shot that the whole world heard.
This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed.
It doesn't matter which country you're coming from, your political views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you're furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just an boring average person. Anybody who's interested in bringing X forward is welcome.
Together we'll make X great again!
Upgrade notice
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Module ABIs have changed - drivers MUST be recompiled against this Xserver version, otherwise the Xserver can crash or fail to start up correctly.
-
If your console is locked up (no input possible, not even VT switch), then most likely the input driver couldn't be loaded due to a version mismatch. When unsure, it's best be prepared to ssh into your machine from another one or set a timer that's calling
chvt 1after certain time, so you don't need a cold reboot. -
Proprietary Nvidia drivers might break: they still haven't managed to do do even simple cleanups to catch up with Xorg master for about a year. All attempts to get into direct mail contact have failed. We're trying to work around this, but cannot give any guarantees.
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Most Xorg drivers should run as-is (once recompiled!), with some exceptions. See
.gitlab-ci.ymlfor the versions/branches built along with Xlibre.
Driver repositories
Since Redhat had deleted and banned all X11Libre repositories from freedesktop.org, the driver repositories are now moved to github:
Contact
| Mailing list: | https://www.freelists.org/list/xlibre |
| Telegram channel: | https://t.me/x11dev |
| Matrix room (mirror of tg group): | https://matrix.to/#/#xlibre:matrix.org |
Source: xserver/README.md at fea8b78 - X11Libre/xserver - Github
Also see: History for README.md - X11Libre/xserver - Github