Framework supporting far-right racists?

General Topics
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Hi,

I am not exactly sure how best to frame this, but recent events have got me wondering where exactly Framework, as a company, stands with regards to human rights and equality.

If I understand correctly (and please do correct me if I am wrong), it seems like Framework has started sponsoring Hyprland:

So I presume this is fact: Framework, as a company, has decided to sponsor a Wayland compositor who is well known to be led as a rather “toxic and hateful community”.

Separately, but on the same day, Framework seems to be promoting, in this tweet, another rather questionable project:

Omarchy is authored by David Heinemeier Hansson, also known as DHH, probably best known as the author of Ruby on Rails but also a racecar driver, apparently.

DHH is also a right-wing conspiracy nut, who seem to believe in the great displacement theory, according to this:

DHH was also involved in the recent upheaval in the Ruby community, where Rubygems, a core component of the Ruby ecosystem, was the victim of a hostile takeover, which DHH supported.

Even if you would decide (questionably) to ignore the man and take only his technical merit, the recent Rubygems drama should give anyone pause.

So my question is: where does Framework stand around this?

Ever since I got my first Framework laptop I’ve been excited by this company and its product. I bought a Framework 13 12th gen when it came out, and now i am typing this on a Framework 12. I’ve been recommending Framework for years at this point.

But if Framework keeps not only proposing and enabling toxic communities to its users but even sponsoring them, I’m afraid that not only will I have to stop buying and recommending Framework but that perhaps a more widespread boycott would be in order.

Surely this is just a mistake and a misunderstanding that could be promptly corrected.

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2

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. We’ve sent out large quantities of hardware to folks at Fedora, Bluefin, Bazzite, NixOS, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Omarchy, and many other distros, and have sponsored either the organizations directly or events with Linux Foundation, LVFS, NixOS, Debian, KDE, Hyprland, and others. Within the team itself, personal distro and OS preferences span basically every Linux distro you can imagine along with FreeBSD. I personally am running machines with Fedora (for machine learning), Bazzite (for gaming), Omarchy (general productivity), and Windows 11 (when I have to).

I definitely understand that not everyone will agree with taking a big tent approach, but we want to be transparent that bringing in and enabling every organization and community that we can across the Linux ecosystem is a deliberate choice.

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With all due respect, I think you profoundly misunderstand the nature of my concern here.

This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument.

This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument.

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 have no problem with Fedora, Bluefin, Bazzite, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Foundation, LVFS, Debian, KDE… What I have a problem is with Framework consistently, repeatedly encouraging and now sponsoring individuals that have shown to be absolutely destructive to the open source community.

Claiming that this “increasing the adoption of open source software” really misses the core part of the narrative here, which is that those people have been excluded from open source communities because they were so hateful, so destructive, that their mere presence was more harmful than beneficial.

DHH is a threat to the free software community as a whole at this point. The damage he ended up doing to the Ruby community might end up outweighing entirely his contributions to Rails, which is no small feat.

Vaxry (from hyprland) was banned from freedesktop.org, wrecking havoc in standardizing Wayland protocols that the whole community could have benefited from.

If you believe helping and sponsoring those people helps the open source community, we have quite divergent views on the best way forward and, perhaps, it is best if you concentrate on making hardware and leave the open source community alone.

In any case, thanks for your quick response, @nrp, and thanks for building those awesome products.

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Thanks, I appreciate you also replying in good faith. I don’t think this is likely to be a topic we’ll be able to come to alignment on within a community thread. We’re unfortunately in a world where it’s hard to have nuanced discussion, even if we preemptively agree on 95% of topics and want to discuss the remaining 5%, in a public forum.

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perhaps it is indeed best to let it rest for now. i’ll certainly sleep on it now! :slight_smile:

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Thanks a lot for your continued support of open source, I use projects daily that you donate money to, which makes me happy that I purchased my Framework Desktop rather than some offbrand Strix Halo mini-pc for a few bucks less.

In particular, I think that Hyprland is quite nice and I’ve been using it for about a year now. I haven’t touched other Hyprland distros, but I like that some people have found ways of making the normally very steep learning curve of Hyprland a little bit shallower for people to get used to it.

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Can we not do this? It’s just a distro.

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But Nirav,

Why is the Social Media account gushing over omarchy?

Out of all those listed projects you sponsor, the twitter account has mentioned omarchy ~22 times since just August. The other projects you mention has barely gotten any attention. Even to the point of miss attributing omarchy to be Arch Linux, which you do support.

Why are you pandering towards dhh and the omarchy project? What is the goal here?

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I know in today’s hyper politicized day to day this might be hard to see, but it is because Omarchy is awesome. That isn’t a political statement in anyway. Just a nerdy, this software rocks my socks kind of thing.

I’m not saying anything beyond that above. Full stop.

I personally appreciate Framework’s efforts to create a big tent. We need that. Division in the computing world is massively overblown and is purely manufactured in many cases.

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Yeah, if you make claims like that, maybe best if you provide some source or context of when these people have actually said they want anyone dead?

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Thank you Nirav, your big tent approach is especially appreciated in these times of political polarisation.

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Even if, as a public account of a company that will likely want to stay active in and around the open source community as a whole, you check who you interact with first and better stay away from controversial figures in that space.

I’m German, I just can’t say “whatever” and go on with this, in that time. I’ll send back my Framework 12, a device I truly love. A device I did all my workload for Arch Linux with for a whole month, as well as my day-to-day jobs stuff.

The big tent approach ends, where hate hurts people in the space who just want to contribute and have a fun time around others.

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I don’t think that is possible in the open source world. I think the open source world attracts mostly controversial figures.

I also don’t think any one person or organization can speak for open source. That is the whole point. Decentralized. Hundreds of thousands of people with varying ideas and beliefs made all of the software in the open source world.

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Those “remaining 5%” are either supporting fascism or not supporting fascism, and thus way more important than the other 95%.

If you keep this up, buying framework laptops means directly contributing money to the pockets of people who want me gone or dead. Doesn’t matter that it’s the best laptop available and I’ve had good experiences with every framework device I’ve bought so far, i will have to settle for worse in the future because i morally can’t justify giving my money to a company that forwards it to fascists.

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What? I am relatively new to knowing and talking with DHH, but I have not seen anything he has said that would lend credence to what you are saying here. Furthermore these are heavy accusations. I see zero shred of evidence on the internet or revolving around Omarchy. I haven’t see a single negative thing coming out of my discourse around Omarchy. The focus is software excellence, and it is awesome.

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If Framework is now knowingly giving money directly to far-right, anti-immigration fascists, I will no longer give money to Framework or recommend Framework. And I will make sure everyone I know does the same. You could have made a good choice here. This “big tent” approach only works when some of the people in the “big tent” aren’t trying to get the other ones exiled or killed. Wrong side of history.

Addendum to this: I personally would love if this was an “apolitical” conversation only about software, and disagreements about software. But the people that Framework is sponsoring are using their platforms – earned in the first place by writing software – to promote fascist conspiracy theories that are about anything but software.

This is not a case of “oh those lefty nutjobs are canceling people again”, it’s a case of “these racists [like DHH] are so damn racist that they can’t stop using their platform to be racist as hell, even though they are ostensibly software developers, and could have chosen to stay in their lane and write software.” Have yourself a little ponder about who started it when you’re saying things like “oh let’s keep software apolitical.”

Additional edit: I think it’s quite telling that a community response of “I’m not happy with this development, please consider changing your mind or I’m going to spend my money elsewhere” is now being met in this thread with responses including inflammatory fascist and racist talking points, transphobia, etc, while Framework says and does nothing about it. It shows exactly the sorts of things Framework is permitting in their “big tent” by rewarding right-wing extremists with money and sponsorship. What a way to tank a community that – a few years ago at least – seemed pretty welcoming and inclusive.

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You may disagree with Drew DeVault but this was easily reachable with a simple google search.

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So evidence and proof is the opinion of a known activist with specific political leanings? An activist that has said and done many controversial things as well, I might add.

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This is a very odd thing to say. There are really crazy people out there, one recently assassinated a guy for just having conversations with people. Projecting untrue ideas on to those you disagree with is kinda the whole problem we are having.

That said, I applaud NRPs response here. I like good open source software. I do not care about the politics of the people behind the software, unless they are using that software to enforce beliefs that do not enhance my life, which is rare. In those cases, I simply find something better to use.

And remember, the great thing about open source software is you can fork it if you don’t like something about the original project. xlibre is an awesome example of this. Xorg was forked and now we are seeing real progress on, what has been for a long time, a stale project.

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You can also read and follow the links specifically to what DHH is saying. I find it odd in a conversation about big tent inclusion to immediately exclude something without reading it, though.

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