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’m keeping a large distance to hyprland, I have not heard about Omarchy or dhh before, but it does seem very sus from these descriptions. It is disappointing to see Framework sponsor such projects, but we have to take a step back and realize that this is not as important as the 800+ forum replies make it out to be. These really are small details. We need to more often unite around smaller sets of shared values and not hold everything to the absolute highest standards, although having such standards is important in itself.
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.
Well I guess now I’ve gotta transition away from Hyprland. That fucking sucks, I just moved to it a month or so ago and really like the workflow. Anyone have suggestions for alternatives? Or I could just go back to KDE.
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 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.
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 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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
They should just support niri & cachy
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.
I don’t think you can advocate for anything even remotely on the “right” in political discussions anymore unless you mean MAGA. That well is so poisoned at this point that everyone is going to assume you’re a MAGA troll wearing a mask the second you voice any right-leaning opinion.
It’s pretty unfortunate. There are plenty of “live and let live” types in the US that identify informally as libertarians and would make great allies.
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
Where are the answers? A vague “they will commit suicide” isn’t an answer to “what rights don’t trans people have?”.
I take it you can answer the question, right? Or is your lack of an answer indicative of something?
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?
Also your second paragraph is wrong. They still commit suicide at an enormous rate compared to the rest of the population, many studies showing increases post “transition”.
Also what “war crimes” are you talking about?
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.
No, if you think that, your brain is twisted by whatever spin your preferred media choice puts on.
The 2024 election was more about people wanting to see change, and one candidate clearly offering it and the other clearly not. Look at Harris’ polling timeline, she was doing well up until the beginning of October, so what happened? For example, she wouldn’t change anything from Biden’s first term, except having a Republican in the cabinet. Trump took that and ran with that, and I think that describes her support dropping around that time. People were unhappy with Biden’s first term, and she wouldn’t say anything bad about it. I didn’t watch the 60 minutes interview, but I’m guessing that went similarly.
I think most thought Trump was mostly rhetoric except the couple things they cared about. I think most thought he was bluffing about tariffs (or thought they’d work differently), thought he’d actually bring prices down, etc, which explains his cratering support so far. The average voter is kinda dumb/naive, but I don’t think they were largely voting on hate against immigrants, trans people, etc.
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?
Oh so your position is that all the Democrat politicians/celebrities/media mouthpieces/people on the left throwing around fascist/nazi/transphobe/racist/etc at people they disagree with are not on the left? They’re actually far-right and it’s all a psyop to make those terms lose all meaning?
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?
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
Lesson learned: don’t support open source projects. One apparently has to get legal, pr, and a whole investigation (on an ongoing basis!) for every project. Better and cheaper to just not.
I hope they at least cut their funding now that they know about DHH’s behaviour
