Ladybird and the Controversy over Inclusivity

This is not a review of the web browser. This is an attempt to explain, as succinctly as possible, what the controversy was, why it was a controversy, and why people might still be leery of the situation. Unfortunately, I’ve had to work mostly from memory, because a lot of it happened on the Fediverse where full-text search is also a controversial idea.

The Facts

In June-July 2024, SerenityOS head Andreas Kling stepped down to focus on Ladybird, the OS’s independent web browser. He subsequently announced a non-profit to build it into a cross-plaform alternative not dependent on the Gecko or WebKit/Blink codebases, to a great deal of appreciation from people who want a break from the Google (with a little Mozilla and Apple on the side) hegemony.

A few days later, someone pointed out an issue in SerenityOS where a new contributor offered to update the documentation to include gender-neutral language instead of always assuming the person building the project was a man. Kling rejected it with the statement: “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”

The Controversy

This stirred up a lot of discussion, much of it heated, both on the Fediverse and on GitHub, as there are a lot of people in programming whose presence in the industry – or presence in general – is considered “personal politics.” Transgender individuals especially have often seen this sort of statement used as cover for deliberately excluding them from one sphere or another.

Kling and the Ladybird project doubled down on rejecting active inclusion in the name of being “apolitical.” Others tried to explain that rejecting inclusivity is inherently a political decision.

If you’ve watched enough of these things play out, it’s usually the doubling down that causes a lasting split, more than the original disagreement.

The Policy

As of March 2025, the Ladybird contributing documentation contains the following statements regarding “neutrality”

The project will not be used as a platform to advertise or promote causes unrelated to browser development or web standards.

To maintain a focused and productive environment, discussions on societal politics and other divisive topics are discouraged in project spaces.

and “bad-faith contributions and brigading”

We reserve the right to reject issues and pull requests that appear to be motivated by bad faith.

Additionally, anyone found participating in social media brigading of Ladybird will be permanently banned from the project.

The Fallout

Taken together, and combined with the fact that the pull request that set it all off was simply trying to indicate through language that the project is open to more than just men, the implication is that anyone attempting to include someone whose legal existence or safety is under attack right now by, say, the executive branch of the United States Government, should not bring up anything in the project that might be relevant to their continued existence – like say, privacy features that might be more important to them than for a team largely made up of people who don’t face the same risks.

Here’s the problem: You can say “we strive to set our differences aside and focus on the shared goal of building the browser.” But those differences can (and likely will) include some people on the team thinking other people on the team shouldn’t be alive, or shouldn’t be allowed to participate, or their concerns shouldn’t be taken as seriously based on who they are. Add the explicit promise to reject “bad faith” PRs and ban people permanently? It at least looks like exactly what people were worried about in the first place:

Using the language of neutrality to keep people out.