Reports coming out of Columbus, Ohio that are sure to rock the FOSS world stating that campaigners for GNOME and KDE projects have violently clashed at a software convention, over pretty much nothing at all.

Punches, rocks and blood soaked ‘Tux’ the Penguin plushie toys were all thrown alike, along with cars lit on fire and key lanyards used as choking devices. One witness said that while unusually violent, this kind of encounter between the respective software project fans was “to be expected”.

“It was pretty intense, kind of like what we usually see in online forums and YouTube comments between these guys. Except usually those clashes don’t give me unexpected flashes of someone’s entrails that will scar me for life,” said Steven Dawkins, who witnessed the entire thing. “I’m not really sure who threw the first punch, so to speak, but I know the GNOME guys were here first and handing out almost Apple-styled pamphlets advocating the GNOME Shell desktop and then I think the KDE guys came along handing out their own fliers and fifty page booklets on ‘how to use and apply basic customizations to the Plasma interface’. Someone shouted out something or other about desktop paradigms and smartphones and it all went downhill from there.”

Linus Torvalds, father and maintainer of the Linux kernel itself, later commented to reporters that both sides were at fault. “I think both sides were at fault, absolutely,” he said. “There’s no doubt some very fine people in the GNOME camps and the KDE side as well. They all share some blame for this.”

Mr. Torvalds, however, then smirked and let out a hearty chuckle as he added: “I’m kidding. I don’t know any fine people, but I’m sure they’re all equally at fault of being idiots. I should know, I come across idiot code monkeys all the time. Add a sprinkle of rapid fanboys and you have a recipe for total dog crap.”

Notable free software advocate and founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, also chimed in on the controversy, labelling it as a “horrific tragedy” that should never happen at such events. “Especially in this day and age,” he said. “Just imagine ending up in hospital and being treated with machines that are quite possibly controlled with non-free software. It’s just awful. One can only hope for a quick death in such an instance.”

Anti-violence advocates have condemned the actions of the perpetrators and say that people should keep things in perspective. “Or at least keep the hate and death threats limited to those little niche forums and hippy free software thingos,” said one statement. “Maybe even stick to digitally drawing pictures of penises on each other’s profile pictures and relentlessly trolling their social media accounts. You know, the usual, harmless stuff.”