Short version: I wanted to write more, but my friend said “TL;DR”.
Many people asked me about the postmarketOS ban I've been given, so here we go.
What was I accused of?
On 10.11.2025 I received an email that the postmarketOS team had received CoC reports that they would like to discuss over Jitsi.
13.11.2025 ‒ The Call
After a short introduction I was told that the reason for the call was:
- I used the wrong pronouns.
- The COVID thing.
- I promoted AI within the postmarketOS channels.
The CoC process
I had the feeling that the CoC should be more neutral. The process felt like:
Hey, here's the ban, goodbye.
No evidence was presented to me.
Enforcement completely skipped
- Correction
- Warning
and we went directly to the
- Temporary ban.
See: postmarketOS Code of Conduct page
Hopefully, the upcoming CoC training mentioned in the news will yield some results:
The team approved a new entry to the budget of 1800€ for Code of Conduct enforcement training.
What I did
Pronouns
Yes. On 4 March 2025, in a conversation with my friend (now ex-friend), I used the wrong pronouns when I was speaking about a other friend in a private conversation.
This conversation was later screenshotted by my ex-friend and given to the friend I was speaking about, including the part where, after writing the wrong pronouns, I said I don't care much about pronouns.
Guilty. Yes.
After a long time, on August 31, I was told by my friend in question that they didn't feel comfortable working with me.
I tried to explain my attitude and ensure there was enough of respect towards my friend identity, but the conversation ended with my friend still not being comfortable to continue working with me.
Well, if you can’t fix things online, why not try offline? There are events where you can meet people.
I tried to address the issue also in person at an event, where we sat for about an hour, accepted mediation from another community member, and then another 3–4 people later joined. I presented my views and listened to my friend about the topic. I felt like we were moving forward, as we started speaking again.
Here I understood that some members of communities really consider pronouns very important.
Another event was a bit quiet, as it directly followed the previous one in a different location and we were both very tired, but there were no major changes.
COVID
COVID divided Czechia, where I live, quite a lot: many opinions, vaxxers, anti-vaxxers, etc. etc. I honestly cannot remember what this was about. I was told that someone dislikes me because of something related to COVID already about 2 years ago, but no one told me who and why exactly.
Since COVID I have personally been keeping my opinions on politics, health issues, and lifestyle to myself and sharing them only with my close friends.
AI
Yes, I used AI to review my code, and honestly it spotted a mistake I made in my C-PHY patches approx. year ago. The broken code was pulled into postmarketOS and no one noticed until AI gave me a hint.
I understand a policy where a project doesn't like people shouting nonsense about AI in their channels. I respect that. On the other hand…
Taking away the freedom to speak openly about today’s relevant topics (putting aside whether AI is good or bad) feels oppressive and not aligned with Free and Open Source values.
In the future, I'll most likely adhere to the Linux kernel AI/LLM recommendations and rules, though I'll definitely avoid speaking about AI in any postmarketOS channel to avoid upsetting people.
Excerpt from the last paragraph of the policy (hard to be found):
postmarketOS Contributing and AI page
The rules
Was my effort enough? Maybe not for the postmarketOS project. Hopefully, they will clarify in the future what is important and make the rules clearer, so situations like my ban can be avoided.
Wrapping up
People are more than a few letters to me. Doesn't matter if it's pronouns, university title, or anything which we will see in the future before or after the name. We cannot reduce human complexity to a few simple rules. We need to use social intelligence (which is much harder to apply in the online world, where we only see text, without emotions and human expressions).
I think real life is much easier to navigate than the online world, as we can feel others better and react to their needs and expressed feelings.
What do you think?