Suckless.org – software that sucks less
I&#x27;ve heard people accusing Suckless of gatekeeping, which is fair--when you consider their decidedly &#x2F;documentation-lite&#x2F; approach, it&#x27;d be a stretch to call them accessible.<p>However, I&#x27;m starting to increasingly believe that gatekeeping is both good and necessary for movements to maintain their identity.<p>This is an inherently clickbait-y statement to make: isn&#x27;t gatekeeping pretty indefensible? Yes--and no.<p>By way of illustration, let&#x27;s talk about Dungeons and Dragons. I&#x27;m young enough to be a greenhorn by pretty much any standard, but I got into D&amp;D before its meteoric rise back to cultural significance on the back of properties like Critical Role and Stranger Things, which has left me feeling like a dyed-in-the-wool TTRPG curmudgeon. I see people on Reddit complaining about 5e (the current iteration of D&amp;D) all the time: there are too many rules, combat is boring and drawn out (since all people really want to do is roleplay), keeping track of health and statuses is impossible...the list goes on.<p>The issue is both immediately clear and a massive faux pas to point out within the community: these people shouldn’t be playing D&amp;D.<p>As adversarial as that last statement might seem, try reading it not as a judgement--but as a suggestion. If you want a rules-lite improv romp with your friends that handwaves combat and emphasizes roleplay &#x2F;you shouldn’t be playing D&amp;D&#x2F;. The system itself is built for a purpose that will be fighting you at every step of the way!<p>These people won&#x27;t be happy until they start using a TTRPG system that better accomplishes what they want, and at the same time, they&#x27;ll be massively pissed off at anyone who tries to tell them so.<p>&quot;I think I finally fixed D&amp;D!&quot; I heard someone on Reddit excitedly explain. &quot;I just make up all the monsters&#x27; dice rolls and abilities and do whatever feels most cinematic, my party loves it!&quot;<p>&quot;That&#x27;s not D&amp;D,&quot; I want to say. &quot;That&#x27;s make-believe that involves you lying to your friends.&quot;<p>Instead, I suggest another system that might be more conducive to their style, and I get called a gatekeeper.<p>I mean, you might as well say: &quot;I want to run minimal, lightweight software written in C that expects you to understand and modify its source code, but I want some kind of configuration engine for it, since I don&#x27;t know C and can&#x27;t read its source code!&quot;