Title of the (concerning) thread on their community forum, not voluntary clickbait. Came across the thread thanks to a toot by @Khrys@mamot.fr (French speaking)
The gist of the issue raised by OP is that framework sponsors and promotes projects lead by known toxic and racists people (DHH among them).
I agree with the point made by the OP :
The “big tent” argument works fine if everyone plays by some basic civil rules of understanding. Stuff like code of conducts, moderation, anti-racism, surely those things we agree on? A big tent won’t work if you let in people that want to exterminate the others.
I’m disappointed in framework’s answer so far
I would say most of the customers of Framework are the kinds of people who espouse the kind of antifascist ideology that that guy that started the thread does.
I don’t think that the fascist sympathizer circle and the “willing to pay more money for an ethical laptop that isn’t beholden to a big corporation for repair” circles have much overlap.
This is easy, “Framework doesn’t support fascism or racism in any form. We support open source software and right to repair. Due to concerns with ideology in some of the projects we sponsor we are reviewing the projects we sponsor to make sure that they align with our values as a company.”
The fact that they aren’t willing to say so says plenty.
i guess no more framework for me.
I work for a fascist. He’s my father. Fox is on his TV in his office beside mine right now. I suppose most would hate me if they knew that without knowing I cancel his vote out every time.
This might be a similar kind of situation.
I think there’s a fundamental asymmetry between receiving resources from persons you disagree with and providing resources to persons you disagree with. As long as your tasks aren’t doing fascism, I think it’s fine to get paid by (i.e. take money away from) fascists. But, no matter what you might get from persons with bad politics, if you transfer resources to them, they are going to use those resources to pursue those bad politics.
(BTW, Fox isn’t right-wing enough for the real fascists; too many facts. OAN is what they watch, I think.)
Agreed- you’d have to also know the type of mad sh*t that comes out of his mouth for confirmation. In this case you may have to take my word for it.
Did the author bother contacting them first before treating them like utter garbage and trying to rile up a public lynch mob? Just because something is well known to you doesn’t make it well known to everyone. If there are no alternatives with the feature set you are looking for, then sometimes you even have to overlook questionable authors, sort of like Lemmy. If it’s open source and has a license that allows forks, it doesn’t matter that much.
You use open source because of functionality. It didn’t used to be too long ago when people bothered to prove other people wrong through example instead of persecution. If you never convince people they are wrong, you just favor them creating and being in as much of an echo chamber as yourself. Even when they can’t be convinced, there are other people listening to the conversation.
We support open source software (and hardware), and partner with developers and maintainers across the ecosystem. We deliberately create a big tent, because we want open source software to win. We don’t partner based on individuals’ or organizations’ beliefs, values, or political stances outside of their alignment with us on increasing the adoption of open source software.
Even just from looking at it from a practical standpoint, it would sink just about any company if they have to go full FBI investigation for every single member. If you agree with OP so much, then why do you not agree with OP?
perhaps it is indeed best to let it rest for now. i’ll certainly sleep on it now! :slight_smile:
Some people want to watch the world burn bridges.
Did the author bother contacting them first before treating them like utter garbage and trying to rile up a public lynch mob?
Yes, the community.frame.work is the preferred method for asking questions to Framework (see: https://frame.work/support), and the first post makes a few statements about non-Framework persons/projects and Framework has sponsored, and asks one question to Framework.
So, if you’d read the damn post, you’d know this is exactly how Framework asks to be engaged.
Removed by mod
Even in what you quoted, Framework has provided no more preferred communication method for this discussion.
No, my name is Stephen.
From that page:
Ask the Community
community.frame.work
First rule of a PR crisis that has high online visibility is to stop talking.
Projects are not their authors. Please give the politics a rest. I’ve had enough of politics lately.
Sadly, the official discord server appears to also be a cesspool. So the community is also not that great
Which sucks, because omarchy seems to be quite nice
It’s become all about purity testing. From both the right and the left. And since any purity test can be anything that anyone wants it be, everyone is guaranteed to fail it at some point. And because the internet never forgets, something you said 20 years ago now is grounds for being purged. Without any thought to what that person now believes and how they think.
Is this situation relevant to that example? Are the people in question changed since the time in which the accusations were made?
Rebranding personal ethics and morals as “a purity test” is disingenuous at best.
If you’re going to take umbridge with someone’s approach at least do it directly instead of this backhanded high horse bullshit.
I’ve been thinking similar things. Maybe online platforms, including Lemmy, can be a bit unhealthy.
In the real world, if you say something a bit embarrassing in front of one person, they’ll probably forget it after a while. Years later, nobody knows you said it. But on Lemmy, if I tell one person my opinion on a topic, that opinion exists on my profile for the rest of time, unless I delete the comment or my profile.
I really don’t know if people actually mean fascism/nazism or is this just a term applied to xenophobic nationalism. I see this all around fedi and I genuinely can’t tell which case it is.
Palingenetic ultranationalism is a definition of “true fascism” proposed by political theorist Roger Griffin.
So, you are painting with a fairly fine brush there. While “Nazi” is more metaphorical, there are definitely people with authority in the US government that are literally fascists.
They should just support niri & cachy
i do want to point out how hard it is to even find out about the views of these people, if you just look up the names of the projects and aren’t specifically looking for this information there’s no way you’ll find anything about it
even looking up the name of David Heinemeier Hansson, the more vocally bad of these, i had to go to the 5th link to find anything even vaguely mentioning his views
It’s pretty plain on DHH’s blog:
In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third. A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now.
I wonder what characteristic he uses to define « native brits » that can be seen when walking.
Or just take a look at his twitter. Which Framework obviously did since they retweet a lot of his posts…
A breakdown of DHHs racist post, in case people don’t want to look up the original
https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thought/
Isn’t that a good thing?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really care what the views of the owners of a business are. It only becomes a problem if they make those views plain.
I very much care about the view of business owners are; it’s how I decide to where my “vote” goes when I “vote with my wallet” as I’ve frequently told to do by Capitalism supporters.
Voting with your wallet has nothing to do with politics, but price, quality, and service.
Then why did people freak out over serving gay people?
Idk, but choosing to not serve people is a good reason to not buy from them, even if you’re not impacted, because they could choose to not serve you or your friends. That said, of the owner doesn’t support gay maffkagy but serves and hires gay people, that’s a different thing entirely.
That’s a lot of bending over the point of money has always been political.
In am abstract sense, sure. But boycotting businesses over something their owner or executive said doesn’t send a very clear message.
Voting is wielding political power, whether it is with your wallet or anything else.
It doesn’t have to be, and that’s my point.
Using your wallet doesn’t have to be political.
Voting is, by definition, political. It is a common part of several different methods of resolving coordination problems (i.e. politics).
Well, I guess he has tried to make his views fairly plain on his blog. it’s just a bit hard to find unless you’re looking for it
Were the views associated with the company? Or was it purely a personal blog?
The distinction matters. Many people are able to separate business from politics, but some are not. The former aren’t a concern, the latter definitely are.
Your right. I can’t seperate people/business and politics.
Because people take the money from business and advocate for the death of me and my trans community.
I don’t see a reason to spereate those two.
The furthest I’ve seen is advocating for conservative politicians, which is generally for more favorable tax treatment and maybe some more flexibility in what services they need to provide to their employees.
I don’t think business owners care about the trans community for good or ill. The only reason it seems that conservatives care at all is because liberals are so vocal about it. And liberals aren’t even really pushing for anything to help the trans community, it’s mostly lip service.
The real enemy isn’t you average conservative voter, but specific politicians pushing a populist agenda, which paints trans people as the enemy. If it wasn’t trans people, it would be gay people, some variety of immigrant, etc, the target is less important to the movement, they just need to be weak and unpopular enough for them to get away with it. Again, it’s not your average voter, but whoever is pushing that agenda.
Wow. Okay. Thats a really bad response.
The furthest I’ve seen is advocating for conservative politicians, which is generally for more favorable tax treatment and maybe some more flexibility in what services they need to provide to their employees.
First off, that’s still indefensible? Like advocating for less worker safety isn’t a good thing right? Or lower pay? Like those are all agreeable bad things for companies to be doing right?
We’ll come back to the second “where the money comes from”.
I don’t think business owners care about the trans community for good or ill.
That’s a pretty broad brush there.
Chick-fil-A does a pretty good job of showing you that’s not a rule by any means.
The only reason it seems that conservatives care at all is because liberals are so vocal about it. And liberals aren’t even really pushing for anything to help the trans community, it’s mostly lip service.
This makes no sense, If neither side cares, then why is it a problem?
Also, why are conservatives in your view just reactionary to what every ‘liberals’ are saying?
The real enemy isn’t you average conservative voter, but specific politicians pushing a populist agenda, which paints trans people as the enemy. If it wasn’t trans people, it would be gay people, some variety of immigrant, etc, the target is less important to the movement, they just need to be weak and unpopular enough for them to get away with it. Again, it’s not your average voter, but whoever is pushing that agenda.
This is so submissive to hate. Heaven forbid we don’t tolerate intolerance? This is such dismissive “it’s the way it is” talk.
I never said my problem is with the average voter (although the average Republican voter absolutely hate my guts). My problem is with the money that flows. It’s the money fueling this hate. So yes, where I spend money has ALWAYS been political. So yes, it matters who my money is funding, and if that fund is funding my danger.
First off, that’s still indefensible? Like advocating for less worker safety isn’t a good thing right?
I think it makes logical sense. They own a business, so they see everything as a cost, and that includes employee benefits. They’re merely voting for their self interests.
And while I likely disagree with them, I think that’s how the system should work.
The counter to that should be regular people voting for their self-interests. Average people want better benefits and whatnot, so theoretically politicians should take that into account when crafting policy.
The issue here isn’t business owners voting for their self-interest, but a mix of politicians not actually providing good representation and yet still getting reelected (gerrymandering), not having good options (only two candidates are viable), and media spin (again, with only two parties, they need to pick one to get favorable treatment).
why are conservatives in your view just reactionary to what every ‘liberals’ are saying?
That’s their purpose. Conservatives are pretty universally against change/in favor of reverting change, while liberals want more change. Sometimes you want one more than the other, depending on what’s going on.
The problem is that our political system only has two viable options, so both parties jump all over the place to pick up votes and it’s actually unclear why they have the positions they do. For example, Republicans used to be super anti-union (they love representative democracy, but not in the private sphere?), yet they courted labor unions last year. Why? To get swing state voters. They’re less about pushing ideas and more about maintaining power.
The real issue isn’t conservative voters, but our entire voting system. If we had 5 viable parties, people could effectively vote for the direction they want the country to go. If you don’t like the way the GOP is, you should demand more viable options so people can express themselves better.
Phew, for a second I thought Framework had actually done something bad. But its just supporting Hyprland which is somehow considered a far right racist project because an unpaid moderator was transphobic in a discord server. People are really trying to squeeze everything they can from this discord drama that happened years ago.
Or, you know, they are sponsoring a) a white supremacists who believes in the white replacement conspiracy theory who’s in charge of omarchy and b) the project lead of (not just a discord mod) of hyperland. Two awful people that Framework absolutely deserve flack for supporting.
There’s this huge movement in online spaces lately to bash any and all positions and opinions by calling them transphobic.
Vote right? Transphobic. Vote left? Transphobic. Abstain from voting? Transphobic. Support a company? Transphobic. Boycott a company? Transphobic. Indifferent about a company? Transphobic.
The simplest explanation is a bunch of right-wingers are trying to make the term meaningless. Anyway, nowadays when I hear someone is transphobic, I make sure to wait for solid evidence before changing my opinions.
I get your point with the rest but…
Vote right? Transphobic.
Yeah, it kinda is? That’s a core plank of the MAGA platform; it’s practically inseparable. Unless you’re talking non-USA parties but then there’s still a better chance than none it’s a yes.
I don’t even think it “kinda is” I think it fully is. Trans rights are currently against tradition and the status quo, this makes trans rights a progressive topic until the day that trans people are so established in the history of a society that it can’t be argued being trans is some new disorder or something.
I hope that one day Trans rights will have been so established globally that to challenge them is anti tradition and uncouth
If you read the rest you’ll discover that the reactionaries don’t care how you vote, they’ll call you that regardless.
I’m taking from the downvotes that there are a lot of people here who got caught up on those first few words and didn’t bother reading the rest or engaging their critical thinking skills…
People who vote for a particular party generally don’t agree with 100% of that party’s platform. Just because someone voted for a party that has transphobia-motivated policies doesn’t mean they are transphobic. The correlation may be high, but it’s far from 100%.
Guess this solidifies it.
I am going to buy their Ryzen ai ITX PC.
i dont think framework is big enough to factcheck every linux maniac
100% this. They support many many different open source project and I read people are bitching when they havent had mich time to even respond?
First, Omarchy doesn’t need funding or partners. It’s backed by a Nazi multimillionaire.
Second, the whole apolitical argument is bullshit. Everything is political. Support for a distro that doesn’t really need support by nature of being a child of a Nazi multimillionaire is a support for that Nazi multimillionaire.
“We didn’t support them because of that” means nothing. The support still sends a message. Just like artist loses control over interpretation of their art the moment they release it, people lose control over interpretation of their actions the moment they act. Does it sound fair? Maybe not, but it’s how reality works.
It hurts to see posts saying “Framework is not political”… Like damn it is, what do you think the mission of framework is?
“Technology is apolitical” that’s entirely false. A load of decisions about tech are made politically, or at least with a lawyer behind you telling what is and what isn’t legal (these laws that were decided… By politics).I think tech communities will have a major split in the coming years.
On one side you have the “apolitical devs” who don’t understand they are making political decisions every damn day. They claim to be centrists but it’s all a facade for neo liberalism.
On the other side, you have people that understand the reality we live in, that understand every decision they take is gonna affect the human that is using their software. That we are responsible for what happens into the world and that allowing fascists to spread their ideas will end badly.Staying neutral is giving your ok to fascism and racism. Staying silent is how these ideas and movements take place and is a political choice.
If you force every person to pick a team, you may not like the result. gestures at current president
People who are happy to not take a political stance on everything, particularly in their professional life, is good.
We have the current president because most Americans did not pick a side, and our garbage electoral system allows a plurality to win
So should we all stop using Lemmy because it was made by a Tankie?
no, because “tankies” are not at all equivalent to nazis.
If the far right would stop using Lemmy that would be fantastic news. (inb4 hurr durr echo chamber!!!11!)
No we use Lemmy and make fun of the Tankies as revenge
A naive answer:
Replace “Lemmy” with a “Nazi manufactured gun”.
A less naive answer:
Consider various meanings “use” takes in your question and decide accordingly.
Certainly a tough question. Use Lemmy, okay, but would you send financial contributions to said Tankie? I wouldn’t, and I would judge someone that did. I don’t think anyone can be expected to evaluate the moral virtues of the developer for every technology they use. That’s a supply chain nightmare. But, given the small number of people we directly sponsor, maybe then it’s appropriate to have some standards?
As a non-US citizen, I actually consider /any/ American company that has not moved to be complicit in fascism. At the same time, I havn’t completely stopped patronizing American companies, so I’m not living up to my own standard. I suspect everyone is a little hypocritical.
It’s literally impossible to use the internet (or even computers?) without patronizing American companies, at least indirectly.
It’s certainly not feasible for every company to leave America, but I wouldn’t argue with a boycott of American goods and services on general - and I’m saying this as an American citizen who’s not exactly thrilled about this mess, either.
Using Lemmy isn’t giving that tankie money.
Using lemmy increases its popularity which in turn leads to more donations or other benefits.
It is is you support lemmy’s development which for a foss platform its expected users do
But not required. If I do not morally support the developer I can instead choose to financially support individual instances, or other projects like Piefed or mbin.
My point here is that comparing this situation to using Lemmy is a bad comparison. Supporting Framework is pretty much exclusively via financial support, the same is not true for Lemmy.
Doesn’t seem clear cut at all after reading the whole thread. You support one thing who’s creator has questionable views but not the other. The main difference seems to be that you like one and not the other.
It’s a significant factor for sure. However, this year Reddit has accelerated its enshittification since the API schism and is far too risky to continue use anyway. The only viable alternative to Lemmy that I see is Mastodon and I never really got into the Twitter format.
Anyone who read the thread will see that the OP pretty much dropped it after Nirav’s response. Framework is a tiny company without a PR machine for these occasions, and I doubt they knowingly sponsored a project based on the developers’ political ideologies. Let’s all take some deep breaths.
That’s a really piss poor excuse though. It’d be one thing if it was “I like Hyprland, I’ll support that” but then it’s also “I also like Omarchy” annnnd now you’re starting a trend that isn’t a great on to start. THEN you have people in the know who see this trend and being to put two and two together.
Saying that Framework is tiny with no PR is no excuse. It takes all of a few minutes to discover what kind of piece of shit DHH is and what kind of bullshit the devs/mods over on Hyprland spew out. I mean I’ve been a developer for 20+ years now and I knew DHH was a piece of shit years ago. Hell anyone that’s spent any time with Ruby knew he was a piece of shit years ago.
honestly if you had a bit of extra money on you that you wanted to donate to a charity you would utilize your common sense and research said charity before donating money right? I would hope so. I hope a lot of people would. That’s what I do. I’m not going to throw money at some random charity then I later find out uses kittens as toilet paper.
So Framework coming out and saying “yeah we like to support open source projects, sure the ones we support are lead by racist homo/transphobes and a guy that thought Hitler had some neat ideas, no we’re not going to discuss it” is not a great look.
But I already have my pitchfork at the ready!
See…when it comes to open source, it’s a little different for me:
I don’t support or condone any of these pricks, but I can mentally divorce, somewhat, the open source code contributions from the person, because their contributions are useful. If this was a closed source solution, it’d be different, because the code wouldn’t be released into the community. There are a lot of weird, closet-dwelling shut ins that fall into the extremist margins.
A lot of early medical knowledge, for example, was acquired from…less than morally clear ways. So do you just take that information and throw it away on principal? Does that make the death and pain of those people for nothing? Or do you use it and don’t condone the person or their actions? This is a difficult moral choice to make that is heavily debated by philosophy, media, etc. There are entire SciFi TV episodes, movies, and books written about just such a debate.
That said, I don’t know the usefulness of Hyprland. I’ve never used it and I feel like it’s pretty niche, so I’m surprised Framework aren’t telling this person to fuck off.
I don’t even know what the fuck Hyprland is because I am firmly in the Ubuntu ecosystem
Also megacorps doing shit like this (sponsoring) vs tiny companies focused on foss (without mega PR, mass propaganda, takeover budgets, etc) is very much not the same thing.
If Google was a tiny corp barely getting by I would morally consider it a lesser transgression using their services (lesser bcs I would still be helping/supporting a business practice that at some future date leads to current Google fuckeries).
To put it in terms of your analogy, it’s one thing to use Mengele’s research after he’s been stopped. It’s another entirely to give his research funding when he’s actively running the program.
One is making use of knowledge that comes out of terrible things, the other is complicity that borders on collaboration.
That is fair. My example was extreme, though. These people are just assholes. Do you throw away the code of an asshole because they’re an asshole?
I dunno…I struggle with this internally. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s a hard thing to rectify and I just wish people would stop being assholes to others.
You don’t fund them, that’s for sure
To use another example, a musician might be known to be an asshole during their lifetime. Then they die. Is it harmful to listen to their music if you’re not contributing anything to their estate or their estate isn’t run by similar assholes? It’s debatable and a gray area, but I’d probably say no in most circumstances.
How about if they’re known to be an asshole and you buy their albums anyway, you go to their concerts, and you loudly pronounce on social media how you support them and that their work is great? That’s a much easier case to make to say, yes, you’re being harmful.
You’re supporting someone who is an asshole, and you’re doing–at least–two types of harm:
(1) you’re demonstrating tolerance for shitty behavior which does not provide a good negative reinforcement to correct the shitty behavior, and
(2) you’re positively reinforcing the shitty behavior through your support
It might be more nuanced if there were higher stakes involved, such as if the good belying this debate was of crucial need to help along a much larger good cause. But that’s where particulars matter. The contributions these assholes are making are not solving world hunger. They’re nerdy little Linux bits.
Use the bullshit all you want, but for fuck’s sake stop materially supporting and going on a promotional tour with the assholes that made it.
I think you need to factor in how prominent that person is on the project.
If an asshole contributes some code to a project, ok. If an asshole is the public face of the project, well, there are plenty of alternatives to use/fund instead.
I agree. Just as a little reminder. Methadone was initially invented by literal Nazis. It was designed to Combat Opium shortage in field hospitals.
Nobody would say: hey, let us not use this extremely helpful drug because Nazis contributed a lot to it.
On the other side: I would never give a Nazi company money to produce it. Two different scenarios
It’d be one thing if the projects being supported were good and lead by devs with questionable ideals but I’m more upset that Framework decided to support a couple of really shitty projects lead by shitty people. I mean one dudes dotfiles and anothers very buggy WM that you can pay $5 to get “premium” for it? Cool Framework, that doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence in what YOU produce now.
I mean hell I got some killer dotfiles for Arch using River and Sway, where’s my money?
That’s fair and I knew someone would make this argument. My example was a bit of an extreme, though. These people are assholes spreading asshole-ry. Not murderers.
I’m more upset that Framework decided to support a couple of really shitty projects
The thread being centered around this would be 100% more productive than what it has devolved into. Instead people are swearing off the most notable computer company that is fervently pushing for Right to Repair and supporting open source projects. Meanwhile most every other computer company is pushing in the opposite direction…
I would recommend actually talking with (I forget the fancy term) medical philosophers.
Yes, a LOT of modern medicine was created on the backs of torture and vile human experimentation. But a shockingly small amount of the data collected by Nazis et al were actually useful because so much of it was compromised by virtue of the “control” in those experiments generally being a torture victim who was in five other experiments in the past month. And a lot of said innovations boil down to “We all kind of suspected it but couldn’t think of an ethical way to confirm it”
But the key thing to understand: There is a big difference between “Okay… that was REALLY fucking evil but Unit 731 created a lot of data we can sift through and it already exists…” and “Okay, hear me out. We COULD send in Seal Team Eight… or we could wait a few weeks to see if they make a better smallpox first”
And that is the thing here. I am 100% for taking advantage of what has already been done in the world of software development… although rewrites are a thing for a reason. But I am firmly opposed to funding or supporting ongoing work by those chuds. They should be ostracized and vilified at every turn.
