Of Bazzite And My Callout Post

This post covers verbal abuse, toxic workplace type stuff

So! Past week has been interesting. On Dec 10th Amelia and I jointly went through with our callout posts of pushing for Bazzite/Universal Blue to apply by their own Code of Conduct, and ban a toxic, basically abusive dev on their team. Shortly after a good few devs in Ublue followed. And Antheas was indeed eventually banned from Bazzite, its github, and social channels.

What is Bazzite? A linux-based gaming-focused operating system.

Code of Conduct? Rules that basically say “Be nice”

Who? Antheas. The developer of Handheld Daemon, primary dev of The Bazzite Kernel, dev of HHD Rechunker. Basically a good large chunk of what makes Bazzite work on PCs and handheld PCs, especially important for getting the inputs side of various handheld PCs like the ROG Ally, SteamDeck, and Legion Go working with videogames on Bazzite.

Antheas_ has been a thorn in the side of Bazzite and FOSS spaces in general for months. He’s an extremely talented and knowledgable developer, hugely important to Bazzite as a project. But he’s an asshole. Not even just a little bit, but a lot, repeatedly, over, and over, and over, again, and again, and again. He’s made devs leave projects and cut ties with Bazzite as a project, he’s been a nuisance in handheld PC space, and he’s just plain mean to fellow developers and peers. He has never once been cruel to me directly, but I was never the less not happy seeing his behavior, and pissed when seeing him insult my friends.

Let’s rapid-fire.

Antheas: “Take it seriously, it’s better to take abuse” (from users to devs for the purposes of tech support)

Synbi: “Banning someone who’s harassing people - even if those people are mods - will not have a negative affect to the community”

Antheas: “It does.”

Antheas, when being told of an exceptionally talented dev in Ublue being hired by another company: “Hey, they sponsored your intern, so you’re doing god’s work” (Emphasis mine)

Antheas: “I get to dictate a part of Bazaar’s decisions” (A brilliant software flatpak not developed by him, not developed by Bazzite or Ublue) Jorge: You most certainly DO NOT

When hearing about my callout post: Antheas: “Random user that didn’t use Bazzite gets triggered” “We’ll figure out the details later”

Antheas: “Currently the only feature that works correctly in InputPlumber [A “competing” open source software to HHD] is the qam button“

Antheas: “If you don’t like my python implementation, you can reimplement hhd in rust and once the implementation is ready you can even use my name, domain, and github repos as well” “I’m quite fond of the name, it’s easy to type as a command and memorable”

Antheas: “I would prefer you focusing on ogui” “I don’t want you to “stop what you’re doing” on anything except inputplumber“

When hearing a dev talking about herself being harassed in another server, Antheas: “What is this with other discord servers bringing their problems here?” (From the Bazaar developer, the software he supposedly had “a say in”, until its developer was facing harassment)

Antheas: “At this point “Make (x) Great Again!” is part of US pop culture and cannot be considered a dog whistle anymore“ (When telling other devs they were wrong to immediately trash on a user submission to Bazzite that brought up the infamous dog whistle)(Side note: AH YES IT’S DEFINITELY OKAY TO BRING UP THIS DOG WHISTLE ON FUCKING GITHUB OF ALL THINGS. I AM VERY INTELLIGENT. GEE I WONDER IF FASCISM EVER INFILTRATES AMERICAN POP CULTURE.)

Okay hold up, zoom in.

THIS IS ABOUT ME AND MY POST. WHICH IF HE FUCKING READ PROPERLY MAYBE HE’D REALIZE THIS ISN’T EVEN MAJORITY ABOUT ME, THIS IS ABOUT VARIOUS DEVS AND VARIOUS TEAMS BEING FED UP WITH HIM. BAZZITE, BLUEFIN, CHIMERAOS, INPUTPLUMBER, AURORA, BAZAAR. HE’D ALREADY BEEN BANNED BY CHIMERAOS FOR POOR CONDUCT AND LEARNED FUCKING NOTHING FROM THE EXPERIENCE. WHAT OF THE DECISION OF THE BAZZITE LOGO ARTIST TO LEAVE THE DISCORD BECAUSE OF YOU? I’d been hanging around the Bazzite server and doing small projects and community work on it for a year? I’M ACTUALLY LITERALLY PARTIALLY DOING BAZZITE TECH SUPPORT FOR FUNSIES OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART FOR THE BETTER PART OF THIS YEAR. AND YES I DO FUCKING USE AND HAVE USED BAZZITE YOU INSIPID GREMLIN, FOR INDEED A FULL YEAR NOW.

Antheas has some real god power complex going on. Egomania. Sociopathy. Something. I don’t know and I don’t care what exactly it is. I like Bazzite and Bazaar and Bluefin as projects. Having him around in these dev and community spaces bothered me being the way he is. Antheas had wedged himself into that position of power one can wield in a company or organization when they are “too important” to let go because of some service they do for the organization. And they can then be cruel to coworkers, users, peers because of the value they bring to the organization. This is sadly a common archetype of person. The asshole that controls the Minecraft server of a friend group. The asshole that controls the backend library of a million dollar company. The asshole at the DND session that has a 3D printer. Taking advantage of their usefulness to others to be cruel for lack of consequences able or willing to be leveraged upon them. It’s a dirty social engineering trick to take advantage of.

Try and not have this situation occur by you, and occur in your communities. Spread out power and responsibilities, be mindful of dev composure even towards other developers. Above all, having empathy, attempting to understand and level with people will prevent you turning into this. I know most of the lot of the Bazzite devs are decent, hard working people. Very kind, very progressive, and I appreciate that. Again, I respect the hell out of Bazzite and Aurora and Bluefin as projects. I realize that things can get heated in this space, as we are developing software for users, making decisions and organizing The Future, enacting our politics and values as we see fit in our conversations and spaces. It doesn’t have to be personal, it doesn’t have to be cruel. I know this was a unique situation that slowly cropped up. It should still have been dealt with months ago. And ideally I wouldn’t have needed to draft up a fucking, callout post.

I HATE callout posts. I hate callout post culture. More often than not it’s very simple stuff that is no one’s business but between the callout-er and callout-ee. More often than not they are leveraged as weapons against racial and gender minorities. More often than not they are leveraged as a weapon against someone’s simple and benign sexual kinks. To a degree I wish I’d gone about things differently, gone to the head Bazzite maintainer(s) in private with my concerns… I’m sorry for not doing so. I was just frustrated at seeing this long line of offenses. Frustrated at seeing daily arguments and pissing fests in the dev discord channel.

I’d rather not have gone after this man’s casual hobby to be quite honest. It’s not really my Thing to be a drama hound and get people ejected or fired from places. Bazzite will suffer on a technical level now. [https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/](Bazzite is always open to new devs and contributors just sayin’!) I am happy that these spaces can heal now but it’s bittersweet. I would rather Antheas have just learned and listened and apologized and done better. I’ve done and said things I regret and I either apologized for or wish I apologized for. I believe in most people’s capacity to be kind and open to learning.

Trans slur

One thing: In my initial callout post, I pointed out how Antheas had used in casual conversation what I thought was an allusion to a trans slur “troon”. In later discord messages he has said that he didn’t know that slur existed, and it was a play on “Playtron” and “goon”. Your guess is as good as mine if that’s legitimately true. It ultimately doesn’t matter if a small part of the thing I was wrong about, but I do feel bad about it if it’s true because for a lot of people what jumps out at them is the trans slur usage and is most egregious. I LEGITIMATELY don’t know, I think I was wrong on the cuff on that one. I am hyper vigilante on trans slurs, I’m trans. Antheas is not trans and can be forgiven not knowing that one. The overall point is still the same.

This all feels… very familiar. I used to be a bit of a control freak. Used to be a bad moderator. Still am a bit of a control freak to a certain degree. Had my modship of a forum wrested from me. I’m wistful. Were it things could be different.