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 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.
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.
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.
Wow framework sells a lot of computers to real fascist psychos. That thread is rough. Comment about ICE only arresting criminals would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetic. “I have immigrant friends” lol.
I don’t care if they’re selling computers to fascist psychos.
I do care that they’re using their soapbox to promote those fascist psychos.
Not sure if they are a large part of framework’s consumers, or just very vocal in that thread.
I wasn’t worried about that I was just disappointed by the thread
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
This is unfortunate for sure. I want to give them a few days to respond for real, it’s always possible they just didn’t know about the issues here, but even in that thread they’re brushing it off as though it doesn’t matter. I’m not really sure what they get out of donating to these projects other than potential PR, anyway.
On a personal level I’ve recommended their laptops to people who have later bought them, and I was even looking at buying one myself to replace my aging macbook, but I don’t think I can do that anymore while this is unaddressed.
I wonder a bit about how this leaves framework as a company, too. They were always the brand people went to because of their stance on the politics of repairability and environmentalism. If they don’t have the politics on their side anymore, their laptops aren’t a great value proposition compared to other laptops. Sure, you can upgrade a framework, but if it costs twice as much as a similar laptop you’d have to upgrade the internals twice before you’ve saved any money.
I think it’s more about repair ability than it is about upgrading. At some point you’re going to end up with hardware that needs a different motherboard and then you might as well just replace the whole thing. There really isn’t anything that can be done about that.
To be honest I kind of think framework go a bit far on the modularity of the device, it’s a nice to have but really I’d be perfectly fine with a laptop that just has a replaceable keyboard, screen and battery, as those pretty much exclusively tend to be the parts that go wrong. Hell you could strip it down even further and just have an easily replaceable battery and it would probably be fine for 90% of people.
Hell no, I love that I can just upgrade to a better Mainboard in a couple years
Why would I also ditch all the other components because of a CPU change?
I mean I assume it’s because you wouldn’t in fact be able to get constant upgrade you’d end up being limited by socket design and things.
There has already been at least one incompatible motherboard upgrade. Essentially a whole new line of framework laptops.
I mean, there’s no real reason laptops shouldn’t like any desktop computer with parts that can be swapped out. Maybe when laptops were first coming on the market with a difficult form factor to work with, but it’s been long enough that modularity should be easy and the default.
If you can swap out tiny little SIM cards in a phone, you should be able to slot in standardized, smaller form-factor components like RAM, SSDs, etc.
And by the way, people can and do swap out motherboards all the time for desktops. There is no good reason to need to buy all new components all the time.
Yeah but you can’t put a non ATX motherboard in an ATX case it physically doesn’t fit.
Unlike desktops where you can get oversized cases laptops are all designed towards the board the really isn’t that much space in a framework laptop. Like I don’t you could go up a couple of inches and get a bigger screen for example because the whole frame wouldn’t fit it.
Guess this solidifies it.
I am going to buy their Ryzen ai ITX PC.
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.
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.
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.
Wow I guess if you have to scroll all the way to the fifth whole link it can’t possibly be plain, can it?
Sure the business owner thinks anyone who isn’t white doesn’t count as a person, but he only uses the resources you give him to promote that point of view as a hobby, so why worry?
I don’t know, was it a personal blog, some social media post, or a page on the company’s website? You didn’t specify, and I honestly don’t care enough to try to replicate your search.
If they’re able to separate personal views from how they run their company, it shouldn’t really matter what those views are.
It’s literally in the post you’re responding to. I didn’t do any external research other than read the thread.
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 operate those two.
It only becomes a problem if they make those views plain.
Even then, who cares tbh.
People who don’t want to give resources to white nationalists. Why do you support funding white nationalists?
You’re not funding white nationalists (if that’s what these people are, I have zero idea who they are), you’re funding the product they’re making.
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.
It’s only Hyperland, not
the distroOmarchy.It’s both projects, lead by two different problematic people that Framework are sponsoring.
They explicitly stated that they provided free hardware to Omarchy
Is that sponsoring though?
Giving someone equipment that is worth money is the same as giving them money to buy equipment…
Sure. But in this context Framework is an official sponsor of Hyprland.
Not having a tagline doesn’t make their support less official. Why aren’t you grasping this simple concept?
Yes? How could it not be?
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.
Vote right? Transphobic.
That is correct.
Yes agreed but if you read the whole thing…
There are people in online spaces that just slap the term on ANY opinion.
Want to form a coalition with moderates? Must be transphobic. Refuse to vote Dem because they’re not progressive enough? Must be transphobic.
Bluesky is overrun with them. I’d hoped to find a place here where simply existing wasn’t stigmatized, but these downvotes are telling me maybe Reddit is overrun too…
“where simply existing wasn’t stigmatized”… Yeah I think that’s what most people want including immigrants and trans people. You might need to take a good hard look at yourself for seemingly arguing that a project making it’s own community an unsafe space for people is fine but you’re the victim because people on blue sky called one too many things transphobic.
Other than that your sob story makes it sound like you’re a problematic person and I doubt I’m alone in thinking that. I don’t ever remember seeing an excessive amount of accusations of transphobia on bluesky, let alone reddit since it’s 80% Russian bots. So maybe, just maybe, the problem is you. Do you maybe have opinions that regularly get you called a transphobe? At least, that’s how I read your victim story.
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
What rights don’t trans people have? What rights is anyone trying to take away from trans people? I still haven’t seen an actual answer to this since the “trans rights are human rights” slogan became a thing.
iM jUsT AsKiNG qUEsTiOnS, but won’t listen to any answers
It has to do with a phenomenon that is censored in most online spaces, so I’ll spell it out in capitals, aSjUrIbCoIgDaEl, basically if a person being denied care would cause them to off themselves, then denying care is tantamount to manslaughter.
Post-transition people are reportedly much happier than they were pre-transition, but right-wingers find that icky, so they’d rather commit war crimes than allow medicine to go to those who need it.
What right is that? What care are they being denied?
If you’re going to write a word with so many Is like suicide you really shouldn’t also throw in a lower case l. It took me forever to figure out what sucde meant because I was excluding the Is due to the trailing l. (Would’ve made more sense also if you just used the phrase offing ones self which you seemed fine with.)
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…
When someone uses “critical thinking skills” or “common sense” they sure always seem to be on the wrong side of history.
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%.
You’re right, they are just performing hateful acts towards trans people, they may be doing it out of laziness or ignorance rather than actually hating trans people. As we all know, materially helping an anti trans cause doesn’t mean you hate trans people in the same way materially helping terrorists doesn’t make you a terrorist. Ex: our friends and allies in Saudi Arabia.
Voting isn’t a hateful act. Any insinuation of that needs to stop.
Voting can absolutely be a hateful act, I literally can’t imagine what happens in your brain that makes you think otherwise. The entire US 2024 election was hate vs not-the-hate-guy. A vengeance fantasy for middle aged white men.
The simplest explanation is a bunch of right-wingers are trying to make the term meaningless.
You had me until this. The term is already meaningless because of the overuse from the left-wingers. No one right of the far-left cares about being called any of the “phobics” or “ists” anymore because they mean nothing now.
Anyway, nowadays when I hear someone is transphobic, I make sure to wait for solid evidence before changing my opinions.
Ok at least you finished on the right note.
Somebody ACTUALLY on the left wouldn’t use what energy they have trying to shatter any hope of an anti-fascist coalition we have by poo-flinging. Thus, someone who does that must be on the right. Right?
i dont think framework is big enough to factcheck every linux maniac
I hope they at least cut their funding now that they know about DHH’s behaviour
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?
They immediately responded
Yeah I don’t think you get how this works. They had time to research the tool they are recommending but literally nothing about the backers or community? Framework will absolutely have a legal team whose job would include vetting these orgs.
But let’s say you’re right and framework is operating a company with no legal counsel (which is also a giant red flag): their response was “we are chill with terrible people in our space, we have a big tent”. Not “you’re right, we didn’t do research on these guys thanks for bringing it to our attention we’ll do some research”. If they said that, this wouldn’t be a thing. Instead, they said affirmatively “we don’t care if they are white nationalists, we want to include white nationalists in our tent”.
…a legal team checking out linux forums and discord servers for anti trans actions…you ok buddy?
Before they invest money? Yes
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?
If the far right would stop using Lemmy that would be fantastic news. (inb4 hurr durr echo chamber!!!11!)
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.
Tankies, afaik, are just delusional. Do they support murder of non-whites?
And uh…the fact that defederating the tankies is a regular topic of conversation here is 100000000x better than the big tent response.
Tankies widely support the destruction of the Ukrainians as a people and culture. One of the definitions of genocide. Are you going to stop using every software written, or partly written, by a tankie?
Can you point me to that (must be lemmy dev or moderator appointed by a lemmy dev to be comparable)? All over seen are posts on power tripping where people get banned because they say things like “Russia started it” or “Tiananmen lol, amirite”. I’ve not seen anything to the extent you’re describing and would be interested in seeing it.
And uh, the problem isn’t the use of software. Nothing in this thread is about the use of software.
the destruction of the Ukrainians as a people and culture
This is a huge part of Putin’s current war; a war tankies widely support. You need sources for these things?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukrainians_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
If you’re going to hold lemmy to the same standard we are holding lemmy to in this thread, absolutely yes. Did you not see the detailed links provided by oop?
And uh …don’t the tankies not believe in those allegations? Isn’t that their whole thing, that western media is lying about it? Ie delusional like I said.
don’t the tankies not believe in those allegations? Isn’t that their whole thing, that western media is lying about it? Ie delusional like I said.
Of course they don’t believe the piles of evidence. The point is they support the genocide either way. If we are changing the standard to purely what delusional people believe, not what they actually support, then there is a ton of people on the right we should stop bitching about, as they don’t believe their policies are harmful either…
So, back to the original question, are you going to use a software written, or just partly written, by tankies? Or is it possible that one can use a software written by people who have differing political opinions from you?
No we use Lemmy and make fun of the Tankies as revenge
Not the same thing. Equating the far left and the far right is nonsensical, as horseshoe theory isn’t a real thing. Giving room for such thought only strengthens extreme right positions and is exclusively used to either distract from or downplay far right commentary or elevate liberal/centrist thought as the only acceptable path. It’s interestingly never used by people from the far left themselves.
Your’s either an ignorant take or one with an agenda, which is it?
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.
As a non-US citizen, I actually consider /any/ American company that has not moved to be complicit in fascism.
This is an absolutely insane position to take.
This is an absolutely
insanerealistic position to take.There, FTFY.
deleted by creator
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.
The main difference is that fascism and racism are fundamentally destructive ideologies/traits, while tankie is just a derogatory term for folks on the far left used by people that think extreme left and extreme right are the same kind if evil. It’s a display of arrogant ignorance, congratulations.
Many would argue tankies live by an ideology with a comparable body count to fascism.
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.
I doubt they knowingly sponsored a project based on the developers’ political ideologies
But now they should know right? But the response makes it clear they don’t really care. They want to include everyone in the “big tent”, which clearly runs afoul of the paradox of tolerance. I am not a fan of their response.
Their response was “we’re ok with supporting white nationalists”. It doesn’t take a complex pr machine to accept that white nationalists are bad people.
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.
Some people don’t base everything they do on people’s opinions. Crazy, I know.
Me and a friend were talking about this recently. We don’t want to know our musicians opinions either. Because they are usually bastards. I’m just kinda sick of having to carry the worlds woes everytime I do anything. I listen to what I like, and I use services that I like. I won’t be brow beaten by anyone.
I mean if your band starts heiling and you send them a thousand dollars, people are absolutely going to judge you and you’d deserve it. That’s what happened here.
I think that’s an intentional mischaracterisation. It’s more like sending money to a band that can’t be fucked moderating their discord.
That’s how it would have been if they hadn’t responded with big tent. Once they responded with “we do this on purpose” it became a thing
I can’t think of a single example of this, can you provide something to back your point up?
But I already have my pitchfork at the ready!
Hold the phone, since when were Hyprland devs like this?
For a while, but only people that closely follow Linux news would know about it.
