No, I’m actually with them on that one. The he / they issue in of itself is tiny, I agree, and if they’d just changed it from gendered to gender neutral language then nobody would’ve even cared. Most of us tend to write in a gendered way out of habit or because we think about our own gender, and in a casual conversation that isn’t that important. But this is about a piece of software that, surely, is not just meant for male audiences. It’s just unprofessional to address someone as male by default. Most importantly though, being this stubborn on having the user specifically male is just a weird hill to die on, but even weirder if that particular action is the one that is actually causing the drama - which they allegedly claim wanting to prevent by dismissing “politics”. And I’m sorry, but changing a “he” to “they” is not politics, it’s just including non male users. Nothing more, nothing less. So why is it such an issue to not just address specifically male users? It really only would be because those people hold some very questionable views, which, in my opinion, clash heavily with the whole concept of free and open source software, which is supposedly for everyone. So if your actions and views are this flawed, how can you be trusted on such an important project?

Also, in regards to this news… “no code from rivals” also is just a stupid thing to say and do. There’s plenty of good open source code that they could and probably even SHOULD use. But whatever. I’m not gonna support this project and predict it will fail anyway.