Framework supporting far-right racists?

[Ivirono]

@another-passenger

The problem is that they normalize the presence of far-right people like DHH

Unless you propose to gather all those somewhere and deal with them - the far-right people are still people. And if they’re not breaking the law - they should enjoy all possible social activities and the fruits of their labor and etc. Basically whatever every living human would want and be deserving of.

You’re asking is unreasonable. And we all know that if the far-right people are excluded - they’ll just make a better Linux community elsewhere. Then the whining will be about them not letting any of the extremists far-left fury Marxists on it ever again.

[Just_Mark]

@nrp

Before we sponsor an organization, we will continue to research and confirm that as they currently exist, they uphold appropriate community standards and are structurally set up for that to continue to be the case.

That’s a good policy as written, but I think that the decision to sponsor Rails World fails to meet it, considering who that conference’s founder is. I’ve seen what passes for the kind of “community standards” that are structurally set up to be upheld by racists and transphobes of DHH’s ilk, and “appropriate” isn’t the word I’d used to describe them.

Well, perhaps it’s just a mistake. I’ll wait to see if this misguided partnership is going to be a recurring thing.

[nicolasp]

Here is a simple example of good communication on a similar subject by LeroyMerlin (in French):

Bonjour,
Votre alerte a bien été prise en compte.
Le site mentionné a été immédiatement ajouté à notre liste de blocage publicitaire.
Nous ne cautionnons en aucun cas les propos tenus sur cette plateforme, ni les messages qu’on a pu y voir relayés.
Leroy Merlin France

In English:

Hello,
Your alert has been duly acknowledged.
The mentioned website has been immediately added to our ad blocker list.
We in no way endorse the statements made on this platform, nor the messages that have been shared there.
Leroy Merlin France

This is the kind a statement that Framework could have done really easily to calm the situation.

[turmoni]

@Ivirono

And we all know that if the far-right people are excluded - they’ll just make a better Linux community elsewhere. Then the whining will be about them not letting any of the extremists far-left fury Marxists on it ever again.

I doubt they will, and even if they do, I don’t care and won’t want to join it because it will be full of the far-right.

I don’t know why you keep bringing up the law. The law is not the arbiter of morality. The law does not compel people to accept everyone in every area of their lives in any country I know of, and nor should it (please don’t bring up protected classes, those are primarily about things you can’t change about yourself). The law is utterly irrelevant here, and businesses, social groups, and individuals shouldn’t be given the false dichotomy of “round up all the people with reprehensible views, or welcome them into your community (and give them money and hardware)”. Just because they are legally allowed to act the way they do doesn’t mean they then get to be totally free of any social or financial consequences from how they act.

[Julia_Tuttle]

Sorry, but “if someone hasn’t broken the law, they should enjoy all possible social activities” is not reasonable.

It is entirely normal and okay for communities to have social norms that frown upon behaviors that aren’t illegal (and sometimes encourage behaviors that are illegal!). “It’s not literally illegal” is an extremely low bar, and most people want better in their social interactions.

We’re saying we don’t want Framework providing resources and publicity to people who have posted racist or transphobic views.

[darq]

@Ivirono

And we all know that if the far-right people are excluded - they’ll just make a better Linux community elsewhere. Then the whining will be about them not letting any of the extremists far-left fury Marxists on it ever again.

That really shows your hand. No, we do not “all know that”, I’d wager most of us think that’s total nonsense.

[another-passenger]

@Ivirono

Unless you propose to gather all those somewhere and deal with them - the far-right people are still people. And if they’re not breaking the law - they should enjoy all possible social activities and the fruits of their labor and etc. Basically whatever every living human would want and be deserving of.

Everyone is entitled to their legal rights. A neo-nazi is not entitled to join my hypothetical programming club. The idea that not breaking the law means everyone must be nice to you is absurd.

@Ivirono

And we all know that if the far-right people are excluded - they’ll just make a better Linux community elsewhere.

There is not a single community doing anything of value in the FOSS space that is far-right, to the best of my knowledge. Far-right people tend to be closed-minded, not terribly intelligent, and focused on blaming marginalized groups for their problems. They don’t make good programmers.

[JackOfManyTrades]

@another-passenger

Far-right people tend to be closed-minded, not terribly intelligent, and focused on blaming marginalized groups for their problems. They don’t make good programmers.

Its good that you do not support extremist views, but just a reminder that criticizing someone’s programming skills based on their political beliefs is not very “open minded” either. In fact, isn’t that itself a little bit extreme thing to say ?

[lukee]

@JackOfManyTrades

In fact, isn’t that itself a little bit extreme thing to say ?

No, not at all.

Anti-intellectualism is a pillar of most far-right groups these days. If someone chooses to join an anti-intellectualist movement that demonizes outsiders, it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re bad at intellectual activities requiring community cooperation from people of many different backgrounds.

In general, political beliefs are not protected characteristics, nor should they be, as they are freely chosen. Criticizing someone on the basis of their political beliefs is nothing at all like criticizing someone based on (e.g.) their skin color.

[JackOfManyTrades]

I think that judging whether a person is a good programmer or not, should be based, first and foremost, on that persons programming skills alone.

Yes, criticizing someone’s political views is totally acceptable, but keep your focus there and be fair. If you extend the prejudice on other traits - well, this is the point where it gets murky and raises the question, if you are actually any better.

[Nodus_Tollens]

I think that judging whether a person is a good programmer or not, should be based, first and foremost, on that persons programming skills alone.

having good social skills and organizing capability is equally as important as programming skills when the project is collaborative, like the Linux Kernel, or popular FOSS tools.

If someone’s code is spectacular but they don’t document it, don’t respect the existing codebase and style rules, don’t listen to the project lead or community feedback, are uncivil in git tickets and discussion, they should rightly have their code rejected by the community.

[eaon]

I’m kind of encouraged by the fact that this thread continues on, even after so long.

Unfortunately, when meeting other Framework folks in the wild these days, this thread has now become a seemingly lasting topic of conversation - where before there was just shared enthusiasm, now there is an added flair of “yeah… bummer”.

I don’t think they realise yet how much damage they did to their reputation.

[gvisoc]

@JackOfManyTrades

I think that judging whether a person is a good programmer or not, should be based, first and foremost, on that persons programming skills alone.

Yes, criticizing someone’s political views is totally acceptable

The problem is that the people that code put priority based on their views. I wouldn’t expect a project led by people that think that “diversity is woke mind virus” to put any efforts in making their software accessible, which is very relevant when speaking about software quality.

[gvisoc]

Speaking of which: does Omarchy ship any screen reader, or any colour management for colourblind users? Just curious, and asking in this thread because I know some of you have used it and are quite enthusiastic about.

[nrp]

In October, we shared the open source organization sponsorships we made to date in 2025. We’re now happy to share the latest batch of donations, bringing our total for the year to over $225,000. We focus on supporting projects that create the open source software that makes our products work, and the latest group includes a number of incredible distros.

First, we’re sponsoring Arch Linux, which is consistently in the top three most popular distros for Framework Laptop and Framework Desktop owners. This is an awesome power user choice with a very broad community and a deep knowledgebase in its wiki.

Downstream of that, we’re also supporting CachyOS, which is an Arch Linux based distro specifically focused on performance. CachyOS consistently comes up on top in performance benchmarks, like this recent one done by Phoronix on a Framework Desktop.

Next up, we have Debian, which is actually the first distro I used when I started my Linux journey in 2003. This is one of the more popular choices for Framework Laptop users, and it’s also the distro that Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and many other major distros are rooted in.

Next, we’re supporting Bazzite, which is one of the fastest growing Linux distros, and a very popular choice for Framework Desktop users interested in gaming. Bazzite is some of the clearest proof that the year of the Linux Desktop is here, enabling a range of games platforms with ease of use that relatively recently required Windows.

The last Linux distro in this batch of sponsorships is NixOS, which is a community supported distro across each of our products. In addition to being popular in the Framework Community, NixOS is also the distro of choice for one of our firmware engineers, making it one of the first distros we test new hardware with.

Finally, we’re sponsoring both FreeBSD and NetBSD. We’ve been working with FreeBSD throughout the year as part of their Laptop Support and Usability Project, and we’re happy to support the foundation with funding as well. While NetBSD doesn’t work on our products yet (as far as we know), we love their mission of extreme portability and keeping older computers from turning into e-waste.

You can see our full set of 2025 sponsorships in the table here. We have a few more currently in progress that we’ll announce in the next batch. As always, please let us know of any other organizations you believe we should sponsor.

Coming back to the topic of the thread, it started with a question around who we fund and why. We took that prompt to provide transparency around the sponsorships we provide, both in the earlier update and in this most recent post, and we will continue to keep the blog post up to date. We also set up a path for all of you to provide input on who you believe we should fund, which helped influence the recent and some of the upcoming sponsorships.

Outside of that, this thread has moved far beyond the original question. We deliberately kept it open to allow a venue for continued feedback and discussion while laying out clear guidelines to attempt to keep conversation constructive and free from personal attacks or harassment. Unfortunately, that has repeatedly not been the case, and this thread has required a disproportionate amount of moderation work from our small team of moderators. To keep the overall community forum manageable and productive (which it very much is outside of this thread), we are now closing this thread. If you have any further proposals around sponsorships, please use the form we shared in the blog post.