It looks like the creator of DuckStation, Connor McLaughlin, better known as stenzek, has finally had it.
After years of friction with Arch Linux packagers, a recent Git commit makes it official. NixOS is out too.
In a CMake update dated 2026-01-31, stenzek wrote:
“Refuse to build in hostile package environments. The code and build script licenses do not allow for packages, and I’m sick of dealing with people complaining about things broken by packagers, and then being attacked by package maintainers who violate their distribution’s codes of conduct. Attempts to request removal of these packages have been unsuccessful, so we have to resort to this…
This is why we can’t have nice things.”
And honestly, you can hear the burnout dripping off every line.
What’s depressing is not just another developer snapping. It’s why. It’s bad enough when corporations strip-mine open source for profit and call it “ecosystem participation.” Now we have our own people repackaging upstream code, breaking it, ignoring removal requests, and then dogpiling the developer when users complain.
That is not collaboration. That is parasitism with better branding.
Somewhere along the way, “free software” got warped into “you owe me infinite unpaid support forever.” No consent, no respect for licensing, no accountability. Just entitlement wrapped in distro colors.
What the hell is this?
This aggression will not stand, man.