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submitted 4 months ago by BaumGeist@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Finally, another web engine is being developed to compete with Chromium and Firefox (Gecko), and they're also working on a browser that will use it.

Here's the maintainer talking about the current state of the project, and a demo of the current functionality

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[-] anindefinitearticle@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago
[-] TechnicallyColors@lemm.ee 13 points 4 months ago

From last time. TL;DR real weird vibes. This is a PR where you say "oops, that makes sense", click merge, and go on living your life. Not whatever this ended up being.

[-] epidemian@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 months ago

It's a one-time error the maintainer made 3 years ago (at a time when much of the US-influenced west was going crazy with polarization over the use of pronouns), not a consistent behavior of intolerance as one would expect given the level of hostility towards the project seen here. I personally find it weirder to hold such a long-standing grudge for a one-off error, and over a project one is not even personally involved with.

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 months ago

Like i said earlier, it was changed to they later, to the lead dev, in german they/them is a neopronoun, and "he" is gender neutral is those situations, i assume he thought it was the same in english

[-] TechnicallyColors@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago

I don't understand how a German grammar situation would elicit the response from the PR. Are gender neutral pronouns "political" in Germany? Why did the dev say "personal politics" specifically?

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Are gender neutral pronouns "political" in Germany?

Yeah, (like in french) male pronouns ARE the gender neutral option, and using they/them would be like using xim/xer in english

[-] TechnicallyColors@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

So doesn't that still mean that they think gender-neutral pronouns are political, i.e. they don't accept them? I've also noticed the dev in question is Swedish, so I'm not sure where German language quirks came from?

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Well, yeah, but in gendered languages every common noun has a gender, and gender neutral pronouns are very very new, especially 3 years ago, so even most people in those lgbtq communities use male pronouns as gender neutral.

Tldr: yeah, but its like the tiniest deal ever

Edit: wanted to add that in gendered languages using gender neutral instead of male pronouns when referring to the user in the app would be wierd

[-] monobot@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

"real wierd vibes" is very far from "transphobia".

[-] TechnicallyColors@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago

That's why I didn't say "transphobia" anywhere in my comment. Real weird vibes is what I'm personally sticking with until I see more. The 'transphobic' and 'misogynist' claims are a leap without further evidence, but there's a very strong clue about the type of person someone is when they say pronouns are "political".

[-] anindefinitearticle@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago

Upgrading to gender neutral language is important.

Having a reflex to avoid politics, especially when you live in an environment where concepts like gender aren't discussed, is understandable. It's an attempt to do no harm that doesn't have the expected impact. It still causes harm because simple problems like gendered language are treated with an allergic response. This is what happens when conservatives hyper-sensitize well-meaning people on social topics. Considering the world we live in, you can't expect everyone to know how to flawlessly navigate these issues on the first try.

Their policy of "no politics" was misguided, but understandable. Everything is political. It was fashionable for decades to pretend otherwise. Many people grow up in an environment that ignores social topics. They need to be accepted into spaces where social topics are discussed, not immediately ostracized for not knowing the rules to a game they are new to.

I would like them to neutralize gendered assumptions in their documentation and learn from the experience, but that can only happen if they aren't ostracized from the community. I want to give them a chance to learn and improve to disrupt Google's unhealthy monopoly in the browser space.

The PR in question is also in error. It claims that the documentation assumed the gender of the user or the developer. A close reading of the requested commit reveals that the documentation instead assumes the gender of an example user named "anon" whose permissions are being altered. The documentation's use of gender is in using a male as an example user needing their privileges deescalated. Still problematic, of course: not only men need their privilege checked from time to time.

this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
427 points (93.1% liked)

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