Martin Gräßlin, a KDE Window Manager maintainer, posts an interesting article about his experiences inside the free software community. Those experiences would eventually cause him to alter his political views. Gräßlin initially viewed any infringement on freedom as problematic. Freedom of speech, he thought, was democracy’s most important right. Yet now he thinks some forms of censorship should be encouraged. This one-time orthodox liberal now finds himself occasionally deleting comments. What caused this change of heart? “The answer is simple: Fanboys and trolls.”

Of the two, he thinks fanboys are worse….

NOTE: for those unfamiliar with German, ß is shorthand for “ss” and ä can be represented as “ae” so we could Anglicize Martin’s last name as “Graesslin.” And now you know…