afaik Gargron is not a "white cisgender man on top of the hierarchy", but also, that is his business.

could we just stop to assume these things about other people?

it's ok to criticize someones' actions.
it's ok to argue.

it's not ok to assume other people's gender, ethnicity, sexuality, any of their social position even if you think you know all about it.

@distelfliege Agreed. Although on the other hand you can't blame people that had to endure patriarchy their whole life, that they see first a white cisgendered male behaving very stubborn (and in their eyes hostile). But the reactions are disproportional.

I think it's good to go back to the basics. And that is that Gargron should give the development keys to the community. A community that includes Gargron.

@jeroenpraat I don't know if that would be good, if development would be done by "the community" we'd need a clear structure and commitment. yes, can be done, and if that would be a coop project, yay!

BUT
Gargron has always been transparent about how that's not going to happen and how he will be making the decisions and he never tricked ppl into believing otherwise.

we knew that when we signed up here.

@jeroenpraat and I think, yes, forking off is a real good option and there are forks, and that's good enough in my book.

I'm non techy. I can't code. I rely on other ppl doing the work, I support them with a little financial contribution, and I want hierarchies to be transparent and not being lied to about an anarchist paradise when it's not.

that's all *I* need.

I'm really hoping I'll not lose my main instance *again* in this mess.

@distelfliege Actually I never heard Gargron sayinh that he wants to be a benevolent dictator forever. So I still hope (not demand) that he makes it a real community process. Not that I want everyone having merge rights, but a small technical group that listens to what a select group of community representatives wants.

That's all and that's not even anarchist in nature. Most larger open source projects have some kind of 'official' community influence.

1/2

@distelfliege But this is currently not reality, so it's waiting for Gargron to move into the right direction or a viable community fork. Whatever comes first. In both cases, Todon.nl will stay. My preference is a community led fork, but only if quality is guaranteed. These things are also essential:

- have good developers and expertise on board
- switching to a fork will not have a negative impact on Todon.nl users
- fork is not hostile towards other ActivityPub projects