The Inclusive Lens

I want to talk about something that happened to me recently—and it wasn’t even from a project maintainer, but from a regular user of a distro I had supported and advocated for since 2016. I dared to tell the truth. And for that, I was effectively told: “You're the reason they don't talk to us.”

Let that sink in.

No insults. No foul language. No personal attacks. Just a frank, honest explanation about the state of the project:

“The problem is that the armv7h builder chokes on the build for some reason and that is probably linked to llvm.”

“The aarch64 however, is simply trying to extract the tarball of the chromium source and chokes on it, with bsdtar ending with the word, terminated. No one has fixed it for months.”

“Also, don't expect any ETA, for literally anything in this distro. The maintainers never talk.”

These aren't rants. These are technical facts.

And for stating them, I got this in return:

“Comments like the ones from Xogium is probably part of the reason why you do not get any response.”

“This is not a place to vent your frustrations with the project, go do it somewhere else.”

It went further. I was accused of being the reason the maintainers don’t respond at all. That same user said, and I quote once again, “that kind of shit they have to read” is why silence reigns. And then went on to add, “it's no wonder the maintainers don't react, if they have to read through this.” Just for pointing out real issues.

But let me ask this: If I were a maintainer and I kept seeing multiple users ask the same questions—“Why are packages broken? Why is there no response? Why is there no communication?”—wouldn’t that at least make me stop and question myself? Wouldn’t I re-evaluate my goals and how I was serving the community?

Apparently not. Instead, the strategy seems to be letting other users do the silencing. To slam anyone who tells newcomers the unfiltered truth into the proverbial wall. To make people like me look like the problem.

And I’m not the first to call it out. The folks behind Asahi Linux, which used to base itself on Arch Linux ARM, publicly apologized on Mastodon for ever choosing the distro. Their reasoning? A massive lack of trust, no communication, and radio silence from the maintainers. Pull requests unanswered. Questions ignored.

The only difference between them and me? I took the fight straight into the IRC channel. I didn't subtoot it. I didn't blog about it first. I confronted the culture in its own space.

And this wasn’t an isolated moment. Here’s something I said less than a month ago, trying to point out the climate that’s built around enforced silence:

“For what it's worth, I've been told off before by someone who I don't quite know if they're on the team or not for putting words to the situation the users are facing with this distro more than once. I've been told this is complaining, that it's not constructive criticism and so on. But to be perfectly honest with y'all, maybe if the situation was not already so disastrous, then we'd not have any reason to 'complain' as they put it. This is no complaining. This is merely stating truths that apparently, they don't care for. Getting angry because when someone asks us, the users, 'when will we have package x to version y yet?' and all we can respond is 'we don't know' is not helping. We truly don't know.”

“Getting quite a bit tired of this climate to be perfectly honest. We're there to pick up the broken pieces the maintainers don't deal with, and when we plainly state the truth, sometimes we anger them, or what might appear to be them, and we get told off for giving an unfiltered response.”

And what was the response when I asked what exactly I had done wrong? I was asked if I was being serious—as if it were absurd to question why facts were being treated as complaints. Sure, I had a slightly sarcastic comment:

“Strap yourself in and hang on tight for the ride, it's going to be a rocky bumpy one.”

Was it dramatic? Maybe. But it wasn’t a jab. It wasn’t even criticism. If anything, it was my attempt to inject a little dry humor into an otherwise serious explanation that, realistically, no ETA would be coming. That comment got singled out, like it nullified the facts that came before and after.

This kind of reaction isn't new, but it's always jarring. Communities that claim to value truth and transparency suddenly turn hostile when the truth points inward. I wasn’t attacking anyone. I wasn’t trashing the distro. I was pointing out a pattern of silence and the consequences it has for users and contributors.

And it’s not just about one broken package. The wiki is outdated. Dozens of platforms need fixing or dropping entirely. The Raspberry Pi installation guide still suggests a /boot partition of 200MB—which isn’t even sufficient anymore. Packages like Chromium have been broken for months. There are pull requests sitting unanswered on the GitHub repository. People have tried to help, to offer mirrors, to bring infrastructure, to secure sponsorships (and the project does have some high-profile sponsors listed publicly), but none of that seems to matter. Because nothing moves, and no one explains why.

Meanwhile, the response to even mild criticism is that tired old mantra: “The maintainers don’t owe you anything.”

I’m not asking for the moon. I’m asking for communication. For basic visibility into why things are stalled. For a distro that wants to be taken seriously to act like it respects its userbase enough to speak to them. I’m not complaining that mirrors were turned off during an update. I’m asking why we weren’t told that would happen.

My mother and I didn’t agree on many things in life, but she had a saying I carry with me: “The truth will make people angry.” And damn, was she right.

We romanticize open source as a meritocracy, a shared mission, a place where anyone can contribute. But the social fabric of these projects is often paper-thin. Say something real, and you might find yourself iced out not because you were wrong—but because you made someone uncomfortable with being right.

What does that say about the health of these communities? About the maintainers who won’t speak, and the users who defend their silence with pitchforks and torches?

Here’s my take: Critique is not disrespect. Truth is not hostility. And if a project can’t handle someone stating plain facts without spiraling into defensiveness, then maybe the problem isn’t the critics.

Maybe the problem is the culture that tells people to shut up and strap in for the ride.

Well. I’m not strapping in. I’m not shutting up. And I’m not going to pretend that a silent, crumbling infrastructure is fine just because pointing it out makes someone twitchy.

If truth makes you angry, that’s not my burden to carry.

That’s a signal. And someone needs to start listening..