Jeff Merkey is the person claiming the "xscreensaver" organisation on GitHub, despite it not being, and never has been, his project.
He has promised to drop that and move the repo to /hisname/xscreensaver, but only if JWZ flatters his ego first. Sounds like he knows he's squatting on someone else's good name, but thinks he's so clever and well versed in trademark law that he'd be deliberately antagonistic all the way to the end of a huge legal bill. Just to force him to do the right thing.
He knows what the right thing is and could do it at any time, but just look at his priors and tell me he'll do that:
Instead of providing a mirrored repository, they decided to intentionally not fixing the correctly identified problem while simultaneously still living 30 years in the past.
Setting up a git mirror that auto syncs takes less than 2mins of effort. And way less time than writing up this README that's just there to lecture people. If it's about disagreement with github, there's also better alternatives.
You can still setup the mirror and be done with it, and put the original repo links at the top in the README.
The upstream has no public repository, neither on GitHub nor anywhere else.
JWZ might not even use git in the first place, the source might be in a local SVN repo, or just a series of tarballs and patches, assuming it is version controlled at all.
It's obvious that the author wants to make a statement, and has their own reason to not expose their work on GitHub. Setting up a mirror would probably contradict these reasons.
This fork is great: https://github.com/cowmix/xscreensaver
GitHub is not authoritative and never should be considered as authoritative. Anyone can publish your stuff on there as your name.
It’s a huge problem. Glad to see he’s at least put a placeholder on there.
pros of having a Github repo:
* people can find your project easily
* stars are a pretty good indicator of authenticity
* you can browse, search code right away
* a place for people to contact you
cons:
* some maintenance
* people have a place to contact you
He has an email for people to contact him.
The only thing missing is to mark it as Archived so that all of the GitHub features are turned off.
Jeff Merkey is the person claiming the "xscreensaver" organisation on GitHub, despite it not being, and never has been, his project.
He has promised to drop that and move the repo to /hisname/xscreensaver, but only if JWZ flatters his ego first. Sounds like he knows he's squatting on someone else's good name, but thinks he's so clever and well versed in trademark law that he'd be deliberately antagonistic all the way to the end of a huge legal bill. Just to force him to do the right thing.
He knows what the right thing is and could do it at any time, but just look at his priors and tell me he'll do that:
https://www.dmlp.org/threats/merkey-v-does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitra...
I know that name ... https://lwn.net/Articles/140157/
Well, it's also impossible to link to the official one (here https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ )
without seeing eggballs in a cup due to JWZ's ego. So I say there's no winners with two big egos like these.
So what's the point of making a GitHub if you're not going to publish source code? Is this an inside joke?
[delayed]
May be also be relevant to link to JWZ's post about it: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/10/gitsquatting/
You cannot hotlink to jwz; he will redirect you to a testicle in an eggcup based on referer header.
Is it known why this is happening?
it looks like the site is offline :(
You need to open it incognito to avoid the Hacker News insult image!
jwz also famously special cases traffic from hacker news. You may have better luck if you copy & paste the link to avoid sending referrer headers.
To prevent impersonation and having people download potential malware from repositories posing as the official xscreensaver distribution channel.
Instead of providing a mirrored repository, they decided to intentionally not fixing the correctly identified problem while simultaneously still living 30 years in the past.
Setting up a git mirror that auto syncs takes less than 2mins of effort. And way less time than writing up this README that's just there to lecture people. If it's about disagreement with github, there's also better alternatives.
You can still setup the mirror and be done with it, and put the original repo links at the top in the README.
The upstream has no public repository, neither on GitHub nor anywhere else.
JWZ might not even use git in the first place, the source might be in a local SVN repo, or just a series of tarballs and patches, assuming it is version controlled at all.
> You can still setup the mirror and be done with it, and put the original repo links at the top in the README
There is no original repo to link to. That's why the README says that there isn't one.
> Setting up a git mirror that auto syncs takes less than 2mins
Prove it.
It's obvious that the author wants to make a statement, and has their own reason to not expose their work on GitHub. Setting up a mirror would probably contradict these reasons.
If Facebook had bought github, they would have made automated squatting mirrors for all the packages like xscreensaver.
> It's obvious that the author wants to make a statement
Microsoft destroyed his company via illegal means.
Microsoft own GitHub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
Right now, I would love to live 30 years in the past.
me too…
Using a public source code hosting product is a choice.
Also centralising everything in one place is a seriously bad idea.
> Maybe someone should fork xscreensaver as xscreensaver-ng as a community project?
Feel free.
> they decided to intentionally not fixing the correctly identified problem
Which problem?
Or they could not. It’s their project they can do what they want you are not entitled to their labour.
Opening with the word "I" and continuing in that manner is the real reason there's no official xscreensaver repository