Is KDE a nazi bar or not?
If you are going to argue, please read the whole thing. I put secret words in the text and if you don't cite them in your reply I will ignore it. There's too much Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).
Short answer:
KDE starting to become a nazi bar, but hasn't turned yet. The cautious antifascist should consider it one, and hold it accountable for what happened. Hopefully this can be reversed; some members recommend becoming a contributor to help make the difference.
Medium answer:
KDE's moderation has done the bare minimum, by banning the blatant nazi in question only after they banned the user holding them accountable; they lack empathy for communities targeted by the far-right and for anyone else who stands in KDE's way. KDE is becoming a nazi bar: Its managers are swimming in (white, financial and european) privilege. The backbone of KDE, its volunteers, have been vocal about the issues present [1, 2], but public leaders ignore and hide those concerns. As for AI, their public stance has been fine, the AI policy's purpose is to block the AI spamhaus of sloppy "contributions". The whole "pro-AI KDE" thing was a misunderstanding.
Long answer, context & sources:
Before anything, note that KDE is not a small organisation struggling to make ends meet. Their donation campaigns overshoot 2 to 3x.[1] They got a 1.28 million euro grant in 2025 [1, 2]. They actually turn a profit. In 2025, they rolled in a net profit of 849,530.24 - 579,744.24 = 269,786 euros [1, scroll to the financial pie charts.]
Now hear Nate Graham, KDE's community manager:
I proposed a set of draft guidelines making it quite clear that slop merge requests are unwanted, and can be ignored or closed.
It received a generally positive reception.
[...]
Several weeks later, various people on the internet discovered that a talk proposing “a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE” had been accepted at Akademy 2026 and created drama around it.
Akademy happened, and the talk was given to what I’m told was a fairly chilly reception.
The next day, a workshop was held about the topic, also receiving a chilly reception.
Realizing this topic was not going away, later that day I re-opened a second draft of my LLM guidelines on invent.kde.org.
KDE contributors began to discuss the draft proposal.
Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines.
One of those people
doxxedthe other (edit: I have been informed that this is not really what doxxing is) exposed the other person’s odious Twitter posts in an effort to discredit them.
Comments on the draft proposal were locked to only KDE developers — one of two tools that that Gitlab provides for this kind of thing, the other being to hide it entirely.
The person who
doxxedexposed the other was banned.
Later, the identity of the
doxxedexposed person was verified, and they were also banned for their conduct outside of KDE being so unacceptable that people inside KDE did not want to associate with them.
Someone else outside of KDE set up https://kdeforpeople.com in an attempt to
brigade(edit: I have been convinced that this was too strong a word to use here) pressure KDE into banning LLMs.
This account of things is uncomfortably centrist. It diabolises the whistleblower who showed proof of misconduct. It fails to address the elephant in the room: why is a blatant nazi getting banned after the whistleblower was? Why was the first response to ban the one holding the other accountable?
Finally, it over-represents the AI shitstorm, which they could've (and should've) simply explained as a misunderstanding: the original purpose of the LLM policy has always been to combat AI spam, it just doesn't fully ban it to avoid backlash from the other side (the pro-AI side), which would be fine if Graham knew anything about avoiding backlash, but he doesn't. (the source for this claim is self-evident)
Graham presents https://kdeforpeople.com, a petition to change KDE, as a "brigade" solely focused on forcing a ban on AI. This is false. This petition is focused on ethics, and cites groups of KDE contributors who hold parallel opinions, like KDE eco, an official part of KDE.
KDE Eco has already declared that a policy which allows for AI use within KDE is incompatible with KDE Eco goals and values. Similarly, we want to make ourselves heard.
The petition's main page also states clearly:
Neither the organizers nor the signees of this page condone harassment of anyone involved or in support of the above linked proposal.
Graham's under-correction of changing "brigade" to "pressure" is not enough, this is still a plain lie about the nature of this movement.
To add fuel to the fire, instead of opting for transparency as they should, (what the hell were they thinking?!) the original "LLM guidelines" conversation has been deleted censored. This is another lie from Graham, who said the thread was "locked to only KDE developers". But, thanks to great folks, we have an archive! We can see the nazi @svin arguing, among other things:
I'll just ignore the ecological things because frankly that's an entirely different discussion.
Before getting called out by @sweetluna:
@svin you don't get to decide ethics either considering these are your values:
"lunduke is supposed to be a jew but he acts like a goy, probably low jewish percentage. Impure as Epstein would say." https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2018431177074364460
"She is absolutely correct you are just a r*ped goy" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2018269865606308237
"I'm the CEO of r*pe. I'm a r*pemaxxer." https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2065140568024346720
"no you prostitute, you just have a r*pe fantasy" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2067834099822166105
"Me when i drink r*pe juice" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/1879941682415981010
"Shut yo b*tch ass up n*gga" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2022412007472009392
"Jew chicks love N*zi d*cks" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2066897484996067611
"chillax n*gga" https://x.com/bee_fumo/status/2072663572954448017
(censorship mine) and the thousand other times you used any of these words, I invite anyone to look up on your twitter account.
Instead of putting nazis in their place, in the last sentence of their report, Graham asks the reader:
please be kind and treat the topic with an adult level of maturity. I believe in you. 🙂
This is not an apology, nor is it acknowledging the rapist nazi elephant in the room. I find it passive-aggressive and maybe you do as well. I do not like getting infantilised and dismissed.
All in all, Graham is really bad at their literal job of defusing the situation.
Graham represents KDE; it's his job. If he remains at this role, it's because those with the authority to fire him choose not to. This also means they are okay with dismissing KDE eco (the phrase to recite to not get ignored is: trans right are human rights) and the other volunteers calling this out [1, 2]. Throughout this post, all outsiders were systematically dismissed as well; you may as well say it plainly, the opinions of non-developers don't matter here.
The current situation favors authority with no accountability. This is the doorway to becoming a nazi bar. To change, KDE needs to better pick who to put where. We can help by being there, by contributing, or by holding it accountable.